dot.rural Digital Economy Research Blog

SICSA DEMOfest 2011

2011-11-21T17:15:00.007Z

Hien, David, Cheng, and Geeth attended the SICSA DemoFest 2011 event recently, presenting various dot.rural projects to fellow academics, industry members, and entrepreneurs from across Scotland and beyond.

The dot.rural stand

As one would expect from a DemoFest, the team demonstrated various pieces of software being developed as part of the natural resource conservation, healthcare, and accessibility and mobilities themes. Hien grabbed the big screen to demonstrate the natural language generation work being done on the Bumble Bee and MIME projects; Cheng and Geeth demonstrated the on-demand transport planning services being developed as part of FITS; and David demonstrated the GetThere mobile app, part of the crowd-sourced passenger information system being developed within the IRP project.

Hien demonstrating MIME

All demos received great feedback from those attending, with several people asking things like "I want it," "when will it be available," and "great idea: have you thought of commercialising it" which is always great to hear. Overall, it was a very busy but great event, and we are looking forward to DemoFest 2012!

British Science Festival 2011

2011-10-27T09:45:00.005+01:00

I checked into the impressive student accommodation, The Green, University of Bradford. A student social dinner was held on September 10^thso that we could meet other bursary students. The following week was full of interesting science and engineering related lectures, exhibitions and workshops. I was introduced to new ideas as well as interesting people from various disciplines. It was a wonderful experience with a lot of ‘food for thought’ and I am eagerly looking forward to the 2012 British Science Festival hosted by Aberdeen. A day-to-day report of the events would be too long for me to write up and too boring for many to wade through. In any case, it was such an exciting and interactive event that mere words will not be able to encapsulate the event in its entirety. Thus, I am only reporting the events that I found both interesting and thought-provoking.

Exhibitions

· Plants as Medicines – Most pharmaceutical companies do not use natural plant-extracts in their medicinal products. This exhibit gave an introduction to the vast potential and ongoing research in testing and validating the use of extracts from plants found in the Amazon Rainforest to treat various maladies.

· Tissue Regenix – This exhibit introduced the research at the University of Leeds where a regenerative treatment to tackle common debilitating conditions is being developed. Natural sources are used for tissue regeneration – soft tissues like knee joints are currently focused upon.

· A musical exhibit on how pipe-organs work was organized. Their history, development and various technicalities like tone and pitch was showcased.

· A thought-provoking exhibit connected lifestyle effects to changes in human DNA.

· The Evlaon Project was showcased. Renewable energy is of huge current interest and relevance. This project aims at designing and producing energy efficient, environment-friendly and cost-effective solar roofs. Large establishments and structures such as supermarkets are mainly targeted for the installation of these roofs.

· Scientific Heroes- This exhibition showcased alumni from Bradford College who have given an outstanding contribution to Science.

· Portraits of Outstanding Women: Showcased the professional portraits of the seven 2011 "Women of Outstanding Achievement in Science, Engineering and Technology" award winners

· Monte-carlo Tree Search - Analysing all possible strategies for most games is difficult. Hence, only the most promising strategies should be concentrated on. This exhibition showcased the basics of Monte-Carlo Tree Search method and how it is useful for deciding strategies while playing games.

· Robotics and Control - This exhibition showcased the research on robotics control at University of Bradford. An eye-controlled robot was exhibited.

· Additionally, there were a number engineering, basic science, maths related workshops for kids.

Workshops

· How to Protect Yourself Online - DR. D.R.W. Holton, Dr. Yang Lan, Dr. Daniel Neagu, Mr. Mick Ridley and Dr. Gill Waters from the University of Bradford are working on a project called "The Artemis Project" to provide young users and their parents/guardians and educators with information on how to evaluate their online vulnerability. Various real-life examples of identity-theft and cyber-bullying were given. Dr. Gill Waters also explained the psychology of group behaviour and how likes, comments and status messages demonstrate the personality of the user even if he/she does not share any information about him/her. It is possible to login to Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites through Artemis project. It is a non-invasive method to assess and highlight vulnerability of users and their friends by extracting profile details, check real-time online postings, provide warnings at early stages. This software might be useful for parents of young users to know what their child id up to :)

· Genetic Engineering - In this workshop, the isolation of DNA from E-coli cells was expounded. After the workshop, there was a short seminar talking about history of genetic engineering, importance of genetic engineering in medicine and how genetic engineering will shape our future.

Seminars

· Plasma - A mysterious fourth state matter – Arthur Turrel, Ph.D. student at the Imperial College, London. An introduction to plasma was given citing examples of various objects composed of plasma e.g. the Sun and all the stars. Aurora lighting was explained briefly. Ongoing research on using plasma to carry out nuclear fusion and generate energy was presented.

· Vital Statistics - Dr. John Haigh from University of Sussex explained statistics in the context of sport. Various models about predicting results of various sports like tennis, Olympic, football and golf were explained. Models are based on population, wealth and resources of the country. Prof. Bill Gerrard talked about Statistical Performance Analysis (SPA) project. SPA is ongoing development of existing coach-specific metric system to support evidence-based coaching. Nathan Leamon from England and Wales cricket board talked about how statistics can improve performance in cricket, by developing strategy. Dr. Georgia Harts from Atass sports ltd. spoke about how to predict football results.

· Engineering Routes Out of Poverty - This was an inspiring and interesting seminar that introduced the work of an international NGO called Practical Action. Millions of people in the world do not have access to basic services like food, health, clean water, sanitation, adequate housing, electricity, communication etc. Practical Action is active in 13 countries and uses simple technologies get basic service and improve life. Along with explaining simple techniques that can be used to improve peoples' lives we played a small game called "Technology Bingo" where several problems were described to us and we were supposed to choose the simple techniques that can solve the problem from the given pictures. After attending this seminar I have started believing that engineering is not about developing faster and cheaper devices but it is about supplying basic services to underprivileged by formulating viable solutions to address these fundamental-necessicity shortages through simple technology.

· Mindreading: Humans, Brain Scanners and Computers - An interesting seminar that explained several aspects of mindreading. Steve Butterfill from Warwick University explained mindreading from the philosophical angle and explained that in day-to-day life people perceive the state of others' mind by facial expressions an gestures and not mindreading. Ian Apperly from University of Birmingham explained some of the mindreading experiments on young children (2 to 5 years). A speaker from UCL explained how mindreading is performed during brain scanning also explained how lie detectors are used during interrogations. Chris Peters from Coventry University talked about mindreading by machines, requiring anticipation of user's state and perception of behaviour. The challenges faced by mindreading machines are adaptation/learning, flexibility and robustness.

· If Only a Monkey Shaved - This was an interesting and impressive lecture about similarities and differences between animals and human beings. Todd Rae from University of Roehampton, London, explained the difference between plants and animals, characteristics of mammals, primates and humans. Timothy Taylor talked about human evolution and how technology has changed the course of human evolution. Jamie Lawson from Durham University talked about sex and attraction in humans and other animals. He addressed the questions listed below and explained how symmetry is important in human attractiveness.

1. Is monogamy a myth?

2. Are the humans only animals who have sex for pleasure?

3. What about love?

4. Is it all about symmetry?

· Maths Makes Waves - This seminar was about Wave Theory and how mathematics helps understand waves better. Chris Budd from University of Bath spoke about waves as a universal phenomena in science, at all scales. He spoke about various waves and their functions. Prof. Nicholas Mitchell from University of Bath talked about waves in atmosphere e.g. Acoustic waves, internal atmospheric gravity, planetary waves, global-scale atmospheric tides, etc. Prof. Alan Champneys from University of Bristol talked about theory of solitary waves, the first cousins of Tsunami waves. He described how a Scottish naval Engineer, John Scott Russell had discovered the phenomena of solitary waves.

· An Overview of Intellectual Property - This seminar was conducted by Appleyard Lees, European patents and trademark attorneys. The importance of intellectual property and various subtleties of how, where and when to get patents, trademarks, design and brand names, copyrights were explained with the help of a case study

· Environmental Science - Barry Noble from Bradford College spoke about social housing and low carbon agenda. He spoke about increasing in fuel poverty which is proportional to income, increase in fuel price, and energy performance of dwelling. He talked about different methods of making the heating system efficient and energy affordable. He also talked about technologies to generate renewable energy e.g. photovoltaic solar panel, heat pumps etc.

· The Science of Social Interaction - In this seminar various researchers spoke about social interaction with different perspectives. Katie Slocombe from University of York spoke about social interactions with a view from the primates. She explained the advantages and disadvantages of group living and different ways to overcome the disadvantages such as establishing dominance structures and making friends etc. Prof Sarah Jayne Blakemore from UCL talked about social interaction from developmental perspective. She explained various experiments performed for studying development of the brain, development of social emotions during adolescence. She explained theory of mind, reading gestures and understanding people's mind. Social interaction depends upon generating and interpreting facial and vocal expressions. Prof. Simon Garrod from University of Glasgow explained the cognitive neuroscience approach towards social interaction. He talked about experiments performed for modelling trust and dominance in voices (both male and female).

· Quantum Computing and Quantum Technologies - A.Vourdas from University of Bradford gave an introductory seminar to quantum computing and quantum technologies. He talked about classical computers, probabilistic computers and quantum computers. He elaborated upon various concepts in quantum computing and quantum technologies like decoherence, quantum parallelism, superposition, measurement, entanglement etc. He spoke about applications, hardware and research related to quantum computing.

· The Whole New World at Your Doorstep - Professor Joseph Holden from University of Leeds and Robin Gray from The Watershade Landscape Project spoke about conservation of uplands. Uplands provide 70% of water resources in the UK and is mainly covered by peat. Protecting peat can take carbon out of atmosphere to counteract climate change. They also spoke about saving money and energy spent on water treatment. Brown colour in the natural water is caused due to dissolved carbon. Discoloration of water has doubled in the past 30 years. Drain blocking, underground natural pipes improve water colour and such water requires less treatment to become drinkable. Uplands are also important from an ecological perspective. They are probably the greatest concentration of complex reservoirs and home to ground nesting birds.

· Fly Me to the Moon and Beyond - Since this year marked 50 years in the space, in this session Jerry Stone from Spacelift UK talked about next 50 years in the Space and how should we go about planning a mission on Mars. Arthur Clarke talked about the Space Elevator Challenge where he explained the fascinating idea of space colonization. Duncan Law-Green spoke about the commercial spaceflights. They are innovative, low-cost and efficiently managed programs. Commercial spaceflights can open the space frontier to all mankind. He also spoke about various space tourism trips and various commercial spaceships.

And finally ................. The Magic Show!!!

Peter McOwen and Matt Parker from Queen Mary, University of London demonstrated various tricks using mathematics, computing and engineering concepts. For more information we were asked to visit www.cs4fn.org

Innovate '11

2011-10-13T13:22:00.002+01:00

Yan Wang and David Corsar joined colleagues from the SiDE and Horizon Digital Economy Research Hubs exhibiting at the TSB Innovate ’11 event, held in London at the Business Design Centre on October 11th 2011. Along with informingdelegates from academia, industry, and Government about the research being carried out at dot.rural, we also demonstrated software from the Informed Rural Passenger and ASSURE projects (GetThere and the Rural Connections Scotland website respectively), and, thanks to Avanti who provided us with a satellite terminal, described how the DART project would work with the actual hardware we will be giving to participants. There was great interest from those people we spoke to (and those we didn’t manage to speak to – all of our promotional materials were taken), particularly due to the rural focus of our work and the unique challenges that brings. Given the wide variety of backgrounds of those attending, people were interested in projects in all themes and the associated technological challenges. Several business cards were exchanged, and contacts will be followed up.

Yan Wang also took this opportunity to meet the key contacts to explore the potential collaborations and funding opportunities. For example, the Director of KTP program in TSB: Debbie Buckley-Golder, the Head of Digital Economy Program in EPSRC: John Baird, the Head of Partnerships and Strategic Research of BT: Jonathan Legh-Smith, the Lead of Assisted Living program in TSB: Michael Biddle. The further discussions in which dot.rural directors and academics may be involved will be arranged.

SpeedScience @ TechFest Activity WeekEnd

2011-09-28T22:41:00.017+01:00

Hello all,
As you all know, dot.rural events attract people people of every age with innovative and interesting activities all over Scotland and the UK.

Over the last couple of weeks the dot.rural team have been involved in different events for TechFest. Gina and Hien represented dot.rural in the Highland Schools Tour... see here for more news. Rob, Leanne and Nimbe brightened up lunch breaks with talks about our cutting edge research in dot.rural, while a number of us were involved in the TechFest Activity Week End in Aberdeen.

To start with .... What's TechFest in September?
TechFest in September is a festival that aims to promote Science, Technology and Mathematics among young people and the community. Techfest is a great opportunity for dot.rural to show its activities to a diverse audience; from very young children to people of every age and background. It happens every year in September.. and this year's programme can be found here.

... and the Activity WeekEnd?
It is an event designed mainly for families that takes place at the Beach Ballroom and Science Stratosphere Centre in Aberdeen. Last year a Technology Museum was built for this occasion by our team. This year on the menu we had SpeedScience a new activity, piloted for the first time in a pub (see here) and re-set for the special audience of TechFest. The idea of SpeedScience is for each researcher to deliver a 3 minute 'pitch' about their research and then hand over to some other researchers. It's a real challenge against the clock, however, given the interest shown by the audience.. for this time and only for this time ...we allowed our researchers to talk a bit longer. The concept remained the same ... a "bite of science", engaging, cutting edge and ....quick!!

Who and How?
Our multidisciplinary SpeedScience team was formed by: Konstantinos, Alice, Andy, John Paul, Henry, Ziaul, Cheng, Nico and Leanne, with additional help from the PolicyGrid researchers: Kapila, Alan, and Thomas, all coordinated by our manager Dr. Yan Wang. The dot.rural team of researchers engaged with over 100 people over the two days and discussed new technologies for rural areas; from healthcare to satellite broadband, trust issues, flexible transportation and so on ....

The interesting characteristic of our audience was their variety - children of every age but also teenagers, parents and adult people.... it was a challenging and interesting opportunity for each of us to rethink and explain our research in a creative way. We had to re-invent the talk for each person in order to make sure that everyone could go home with an idea of what dot.rural is all about in a funny environment.

And here you can see our team in action!!! Ready ...Steady... GO!!! tick tack.. tick tack..






From TechFest 2011

Check out for our next SpeedScience Event in November!!

From Cells to Cellphones

2011-09-09T13:06:00.011+01:00

Last week saw the return of the Techfest

Highland Schools Tour.Dot.rural’s Hien Nguyen and Gina Maffey were joined by Sean McMahon to give secondary school pupils a taste of what science has to offer. With a mix of backgrounds in Computing Science (Hien), Ecology (Gina) and Geology (Sean) it seemed natural to explore the importance of an interdisciplinary perspective in science.

As an icebreaker, we asked three volunteers to imagine that they worked in one of our respective roles. We then gave them nine objects that they had to divide among themselves according to whom they thought used the object in their line of work. On offer were a computer, a deer antler, a compass, a fossil, a pair of binoculars, an iPhone, a book on bumblebees, a copy of Microbiology Today and a blood glucose meter. Can you determine who owns which items? Answers at the end of the blogpost!

Having broken the ice and highlighted the importance of looking to different disciplines for creativity in research projects, we aimed to get students thinking about the interaction between humans, nature and technology.

Hien kicked things off with a look at biomimicry and how we can borrow from nature’s design when considering our own technological development. Buildings based on termite mounds, trains based on kingfishers and cars based on yellow boxfish started to get the creative juices flowing. Although, it was ‘rex’ a six-legged robot from University of Michigan and University of California, Berkely, developed from studies of insect movement that captured most people’s attention. Hien rounded off his part with a look at evolution, but not quite as Darwin saw it. He showed how genetic programming can allow a programme to adapt in order to solve a problem, although still within a strict set of rules.

Having established the link between nature and technology it was up to Sean to point out how useful technology can be when trying to understand us. Using the parts of a computer to show how the complex modules of the brain operate, Sean was able to take an intriguing look at the similarities we share. Despite our comparable capacity for memory, problem solving and information movement, many of the students still (thankfully) refused to accept that we are merely computers. This section culminated in an exploration of why we are not just machines, with an all too brief philosophical consideration of human creativity and emotion.

Gina concluded each session by adding the final link to our topic triangle and looking at how technology can impact on our understanding of nature in the future. Before looking to the future students were asked to consider the past with… a toilet roll. 200 sheets of toilet roll were used to present a scale of the 4.55 billion years since the Earth’s creation, with the last 0.5mm representing the 100,000 years that Homo sapiens have been around. Students were asked to consider all the things that we have created or discovered in that relatively short space of time and the subsequent impact that this has had on our planet. To conclude serious consideration was made as to the challenges that scientists face in the future with an inspirational recording about the importance of our ‘pale blue dot’ from Carl Sagan .

The tour visited five schools beginning in the village of Kinlochbervie, before moving to Ullapool, Gairloch, Portree and finishing in Plockton. Without exception each school was welcoming and enthusiastic about the material presented, and we received positive feedback throughout. As presenters there were some intriguing patterns in behaviour with each age group and much to our surprise some of the toughest questions and most thoughtful answers came from the youngest students. We hope that the talk was able to get some individuals thinking about how nature, technology and humans can interact to address some of the problems society will face in the future. We challenge you to let your imagination run wild and think about what technology you would invent to help preserve our planet?

Answers to the icebreaker:

Hien – Computer, glucose meter and a book on bumblebees

Sean – Fossil, compass and a copy of ‘Microbiology Today’

Gina – Deer antler, Binoculars and an iPhone

docfest: RCUK Digital Economy Summer School 2011

2011-07-21T08:12:00.001+01:00

A ten strong group of dot.rural PhD students made their way to Lancaster University to take part in the RCUK digital economy summer school, docfest, hosted by HighWire DTC. With a programme of creativity, risk, leadership, collaboration and serendipitous jelly beans there was something in there for everyone.

DAY ONE: 13th July

Day one began with random groups assigned according to jelly beans distributed as everyone entered the impressive Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts building on campus.

Prof. Alan Dix began the activities with a creative angle on critiquing ideas. Distinctly bad ideas were thought up by each group, including, custard bricks, ice pokers and spiky cushions. These bad ideas were then swapped between groups and thoroughly assessed to establish the exact properties that them a bad idea. Flipping things round it was then asked what was good about this bad idea. Readopting these good properties the bad idea was promoted as a good idea.
Any other bad ideas in mind? ...Wind-up fridge, self-lubricating floor tiles, door with hinges on all 4 sides, and the worst mesh condoms... now try to think of anything good about them ?!?!?!?!

In his following lecture Alan emphasised the importance of critical assessment, and really asking what makes your own ideas good or bad. The bad ideas are the sparkling points that allow us to think out of the boundaries and they lead to generate new good ideas. Taking this theoretical understanding and putting it together with a practical application makes for a winning combination in the PhD.

"Blame yourself for what you do, but not for what who you are" - Alan Dix.

Chris Csikszentmihalyi from Massachusetts Institute of Technology used a mixture of amusing anecdotes from his own career to highlight the importance of personal, intellectual and professional risk in the creative process. Chris' talk was followed by a disclaimer that HighWire DTC were not promoting anyone take on activities that would result in arrest during their PhD. This was swiftly followed by a reply from Chris that ' Yes, yes, do get arrested'. With this in mind groups began looking at their own PhDs to ask how risky their ideas were. Discussions then looked at opportunities to increase the level of risk in the PhD, creating a fantasy PhD where anything is possible. Despite the light hearted take on this activity it did highlight the importance of standing back and questioning how much you were pushing the boundaries of your ideas. Chris concluded his talk with a video to explain that taking a risk can be valuable where Werner Herzog is eating his shoe. Werner had promised to “eat his shoe” if Errol Morris would ever finish a film. Well, Morris did it and Werner kept the promise concluding that:

"To eat a shoe is a foolish signal, but it was worthwhile and once in a while we should be foolish enough to do things like that. More shoes, more boots, more garlic." - Werner Herzog

Sir Chris Boningto n the mountaineer rounded off the afternoon with an inspiring look at leadership and team work. Giving a gripping account of his trials whilst climbing Everest he demonstrated the qualities of good leadership as well as every team member being aware of each others strengths and weaknesses. Enthused and motivated by Sir Chris' tales we left the session to sit in the sun and enjoy a fantastic BBQ.

"True leaders provide opportunities for others rather than trying to grab them for themselves." - Chris Bonington

After dinner thoughts turned to the future as Mark Huijbregts, the worldwide digital director of Saatchi and Saatchi, explored the impact that the individual is having on branding and design, and ultimately how this is changing the digital realm.

DAY TWO: 14th July

Again jelly beans were the order of the day to facilitate serendipitous connections throughout the day. The mornings activities started with an update on the breadth of intriguing research being conducted across the hubs and digital training centres throughout the UK. This was followed by a lecture from an interdisciplinary artist, Jane Prophet who has collaborated across the sciences, arts and computing to produce a diverse range of visual media. Jane highlighted the importance of recognising creativity and different working practices to make multi-disciplinary collaborations successful.

The final activity for the two days drew on all the topics covered and pitched teams against one another against the clock. Each group was issued with a locked box containing instructions for the rest of the afternoon and a key. The twist being that the key did not unlock the box currently owned by a team. A rapid flurry of box swapping began across the room with the fastest team locating their box in only 5secs! Teams then relaxed a little over lunch to create a Haiku of just 17 syllables, producing a mixture of comical and abstract poetry. After refuelling a fast and furious treasure hunt ensued where teams had to answer a combination of mathematical problems whilst searching for hidden locations around the university campus. With some devious and tactical game play being brought into action there were disqualifications and point deductions dished out. However, the final winning group contained none other than one of dot.rural's newest recruits Danny Heptinstall.

Although tiring, the two days were fun filled and it was great to have an opportunity to stand back and take a look at the PhD from a fresh angle. A big thank you to our hosts HighWire, they will be a hard act to follow at next years docfest.

..happy people at docfest...

and the dot.rural delegation:

Café Connect 10 – Tuesday 12th July, Cannich

2011-07-19T18:08:00.009+01:00

The final event brings Café Connect to a close (at least for this year).

Dr Sarah Skerratt’s (dot.rural Associate Investigator and Rural Society Research Team Leader, Scottish Agricultural College) talk was held at the fantastic Bog Cotton Café, on the Cannich Caravan and Camping site.

The talk, entitled ‘Rural resilience: Community connections and technologies for tomorrow’, attracted a strong turnout of 14.

Sarah introduced the concept of ‘resilience’ (the “development and engagement of community resources by community members, through strategic means”) and the role of rural broadband within it.

Tying in nicely with her work on the dot.rural DEAR project, Sarah went on to: present a picture of the current demand for broadband, as driven by UK communities themselves; emphasise the importance for communities to understand and categorise their level of resilience, ultimately influencing it, given the government’s and policymakers’ increasing use of the term.

Sarah also referred to the (former) Commission for Rural Communities’ ‘Mind the Gap: Digital England – a rural perspective’ report: “Currently, the incidence of rural home working is as much as three times greater than for urban areas”.

Here are a few examples of successful community-led broadband projects across the UK, which Sarah mentioned:
- Hebrides.net
- Angus Broadband Co-operative Limited
- The Tegola Project (watch our dot.rural seminar on this, by Dr Andy Dearden, here)
- The Phone Co-operative and the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust

Following this template, Sarah urged communities to state their demand and outline potential benefits when agitating their councillors, quoting the Broadband Delivery UK's plan (to be developed by July 2012).

I finally met Norette Ferns (fellow tweeter, on behalf of SNRNwebsite) in the audience. It was also great to see one lady there after attending the Café Connect in Drumnadrochit the night before – we officially have a groupie!

Sarah’s research normally involves touring Scotland in a camper van for days on end, collecting data. So this, along with her involvement in the Scotland National Rural Network’s Village Halls & Community Buildings Networking event in Birnam, mean she’s no stranger to the Café Connect concept. This all stood her in good stead for the lively discussion session that followed…

- Do/Can communities ‘become’ resilient, or do they start off as resilient? Is it “something a community has, or something they get through fighting?”
- Using ‘white space’ technology for rural broadband, i.e. the current trial on the Isle of Bute.
- “Is there a gap between what people want to do/change in their communities, and what they’re actually prepared to do?”
- “Online engagement isn’t the only answer for seeding community action – traditional methods (posters, word of mouth etc) are also invaluable which is probably quite a good thing for the communities’ ‘health’.”
- Real concerns over the prohibitive cost of satellite broadband provision, and capacity issues as more and more of the community get online.
- Queries over what’s actually possible with high-speed broadband; “what do people do with it?” (linking in with the dot.rural SIRA project’s case study work).
- Concerns over the compatibility and upgrading of hardware to cope with the increasing high-speed broadband provision.
- Expectations of broadband provision, and the differences depending on “where you’ve come from” (if you’re an incomer).
- The increasing focus on ‘remote rural’ areas, but what about the forgotten ‘in between spaces’?
- Issues of capacity/time for effective community engagement; the need for external resource to assist with this.
- The challenges associated with science jargon and the choice of language employed by policymakers and government, i.e. “what does it actually mean – in terms of download speeds etc – to go from, say, 2 to 4 Mbps?”

Special thanks goes to Fay Jones (the Cannich champion), Ian, Edward and Robbie for their contributions to the debate.

So, after 10 events, in 10 communities, in 10 days, what’s the verdict? I’m exhausted but it’s definitely been worth it. We’ve had 6 (out of the 10) undoubted successes, with between 13 and 24 people attending (that’s more than 16% of the local population in some cases!).

And BIG thanks to Aileen for booking the (TEN!) ferries and the B&Bs, and to Mat for being 'chief bannerstand setter-upper' and for driving most of the mammoth 1429 miles!

What’s next? I’ll be evaluating the pilot and composing a report shortly for dot.rural and the Scottish Government (i.e. the funders!). After that… hopefully Café Connect will be back next year! In the mean time, please feel free to comment on any of the blog posts.

Claire *collapses*

p.s. here’s a little something for Rene, and the rest of the Digital Conservation project team, to appreciate…

Café Connect 9 – Monday 11th July, Drumnadrochit

2011-07-18T17:06:00.008+01:00

9 down, 1 to go and we’re flagging… just a tad! (Who’s idea was it to do 10 events in 10 days, across Scotland, again?!)

Leaving Eskdalemuir (and the trauma of last night’s feathery casualty) behind, we headed north to Drumnadrochit. Seven hours later, we’d arrived along the banks of Loch Ness.

The Drumnadrochit champion and Centre Co-ordinator at the Craigmonie Centre, Fran Davidson, gave us a quick tour of the Glen Urquhart High School (integrated with the community centre) before setting up.

Fran did a super job maximising the attendance from around the Loch, using both traditional and social media tools. She even targeted the local MSPs, including Danny Alexander. Unfortunately none of the politicians invited could make it on the night.

Dr Lizzy Tait’s (dot.rural Impact Assessment Research Fellow) thought-provoking talk, entitled ‘The Power of Social Media: Transformational tweeting or devaluation of democracy?’ pulled in the crowds at the Craigmonie Centre: 18 people to be precise.

In the true spirit of the night’s proceedings, I was tweeting throughout, incorporating the central element of social media…

''social media is just 1 contributing factor, in a mesh of interactions, in recent political revolutions'' #CafeConnect bit.ly/iN9Bhw

In a political bubble? Does social media re-enforce political beliefs, or broaden them? #CafeConnect bit.ly/iN9Bhw

Tonight's 'social media' #CafeConnect bit.ly/iN9Bhw: @theSNP's are most active party with social media...

No one in tonight's 'social media' #CafeConnect bit.ly/iN9Bhw audience is a member of a political party

Social networking accounts for approx 1/4 of all time spent online... #CafeConnect bit.ly/iN9Bhw

if a political candidate's on twitter, r u more likely to become politically engaged with their party/agenda? #CafeConnect bit.ly/iN9Bhw

Using Internet techs to help promote political views is nothing new... #CafeConnect bit.ly/iN9Bhw

RT @dannyalexander just about to kick off with drumnadrochit #CafeConnect bit.ly/iN9Bhw -shame you couldnt make it!

just about to kick off with drumnadrochit #CafeConnect bit.ly/iN9Bhw follow our live tweets!

Lizzy’s talk stimulated great debate from the audience, including…
- Within the NHS, the (almost) instantaneous sharing of information raises challenges surrounding information accuracy and privacy.
- Two worlds colliding with the increasing impact of social media on mainstream, traditional media: “a good supplement but not a full replacement”.
- The possibility of social media replacing newspapers, but not journalists. Without these, you lose some level of political analysis.
- Twitter as a signpost, a gateway; “a blog without a twitter feed is like having a restaurant without a sign”.
- Political parties have been slow in adopting social media and haven’t used it as intended, i.e. to distribute small bits of information, quickly.
- The dangers of politicians abusing or exploiting demographic information contained within social media networks.
- NodeXL: A network analysis software tool which doesn’t collect demographic information… yet.
- Social media in rural areas has become the ‘hub’ for up-to-date, accurate information in dynamic situations such as school closures etc.
- The influence of social media: “a network is not proportional to the number of people following you, but the number of people following them…”
- The importance of political parties engaging people, through social media, on a local, not just a national, level.
- Concerns over accessibility and digital exclusion, with new technologies possibly not being able to reach everyone, everywhere (due to cost or distance).
- The contrast between tools such as Facebook (more private? requiring a ‘real life’ interaction first?) and Twitter (the opposite?).
- Social media (about free will, autonomy, individuals) vs. political parties hierarchical organisations): does the mass adoption of social media pave the way for more independent politicians?
- The impact of social media when raising awareness about large companies and revolutions (are these just protests, without inducing actual change?).
- The power of the 'retweet' (RT)!
- Political institutions are built on an old model of trust, and the ability to gain public trust has changed through social media. At what point does a regular tweeter become a ‘politician’? e.g. Ben Goldacre, creating ‘policy’ through discussions with ‘followers’.
- Social media as “profoundly democratic”, with “my tweet being just as valid as the next persons”.
- “The whole point of social media is the conversation.”
- The positive, ‘serendipitous effect’ of social media: perhaps you experience an awkward, and seemingly pointless introduction to social media, but then find a positive and relevant use for it.
- The simultaneous engagement between TV (old media) and social media e.g. #bbcqt
- Is social media making democracy more, or less, robust? Well that depends on what you mean by ‘democracy’…

Finally, special thanks go to the following for great contributions to the night's discussions: Rene Looper, Miles Mack (a GP from Dingwall), Rab Gordon, and Morag from the Enterprise North East Trust.

One left: Cannich tomorrow. I can’t believe the end is in sight.

Claire

Café Connect 8 – Sunday 10th July, Eskdalemuir

2011-07-18T13:30:00.011+01:00

Day 8 and its just a short drive from New Galloway to Eskdalemuir for the next instalment of Café Connect.

Eskdalemuir has one big claim to fame: its home to the first Tibetan Buddhist temple in the West… The Kagyu Samye Ling Tibetan Buddhist Centre.

Our hosts for the evening, the Upper Eskdale Develeopment Group (UEDG), coordinated a petition, ultimately convincing the council to sell the Old School (or ‘Hub’) to the community last year… for the bargain price of £1! The UEDG are now busy making plans and writing funding proposals to redevelop and extend the Hub.

At the venue (the Hub, not the temple!) we saw a great turnout (16 people) as the UEDG rallied around, fully supporting Café Connect.

Dr Advaith Siddharthan’s (dot.rural Natural Resource Conservation and Computing Science Associate Investigator) talk, entitled ‘Citizen Science: Conservation research is in your hands’, began with a light introduction to the world of citizen science (‘Citizen’ referring to the element of democracy and participation).

Advaith named GalaxyZoo as a popular example of a well-established citizen science project, utilising crowd sourcing.

He went on to point out that the history of Computing Science mirrors that of Citizen Science, spanning Distributed Computing to Brain Sourcing/Human Computation (the technology behind e-Science).

It seems that the field of Natural Resource Conservation has a long history of public participation, e.g. the activities of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

Advaith’s talk described dot.rural’s Digital Conservation project, involving the Bumble Bee Conservation Trust's Bee Watch, asking:
- How can we motivate people to engage with Bumble Bee conservation?
- How do we sustain this motivation? Through user-specific feedback, online games, creating online communities etc.
- Is such a project scalable?

Advaith’s interactive ‘identify the Bumble Bee’ exercise sparked some lively comments: “Its great just to know there are so many different types!”.

I couldn’t help wondering why I, and the rest of the University’s Public Engagement with Science Unit, haven’t been more actively involved in this project – the fit seems obvious. Also, I now have a plan to unlock some Partnership Resource funding and launch a schools competition around Bumble Bee conservation!

A summary of the lively discussions that followed the talk…
- The ‘hooks’ for motivating people are, essentially, communicating and understanding the life-changing impact of not acting and not conserving species, “getting people early on in life”, and communicating the final research outputs back to the public(s).
- Tales of being involved in AuroraWatch – a system, which alerts members, enables sharing of photographs, and (crucially) feeds back to users after recent activity – and their successful, personal and community-building approach: “The more we engage with them, the more they engage with us”.
- Awareness of the current Bugs in Gardens Dumfries and Galloway project whereby members of the public are encouraged to record the bugs they find in their gardens.
- The wildlife recording exhibition about to open at the Tullie House Museum, Cumbria – “an old fashioned type of engagement”.
- The need for people to not just collect data, but also, to ask questions! i.e. the Wild About Britain forum - an online community of over 40,000 members.
- Awareness of the Woodland Trust’s management schemes.
- The role of narrative and art in getting children involved in conservation; “don’t think of this as a science”, “perhaps its part of the wider learning experience”, tying in with Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence. In which case, who’s responsibility is this? Is there a need for a whole new cohort to deliver such engagement?
- Apply the methods and techniques young children use when engaging with each other, virtually, to motivating people to do conservation and citizen science.
- Queries over “where the science in citizen science is”.
- Questions surrounding image-recognition technology: Although not the goal of citizen science, if a computer can recognise an image of a bee, or a bird, automatically, where’s the need for an enthusiastic and engaged public?

Big thanks to Jock Miller, Nancy Chinnery and the rest of the team for the fanstatic hosting (and cakes!)…

It was unfortunate that the Eskdalemuir champion, Nick Jennings (Chairman, UEDG), was unable to make it due to illness. Nick did a great job in the run up to Café Connect, spreading the word. As it turns out, his marketing strategy was superbly targeted, with a whole bunch of enthusiastic and professional ecologists in the audience!

Some members of tonight’s audience included…
- Teresa (Statistical Ecologist) and Mustafa from the Cumbria Biodiversity Data Centre (find them on Facebook here).
- Fiona Russell (Ph.D. researcher at Glasgow University) working in the field of Eco-Criticism and Eco-Poetry!
- Chris Miles (Scottish Natural Heritage Area Manager for Dumfries and Galloway).
- Tim (Woodland Sites Manager, the Borders Forest Trust).

On the road back to the B&B in Langholm – with a novel alternative to wifi (wireless Internet signal from the mains Earth!) – we managed to dodge two birds, a hare and a fox… unfortunately, we couldn’t miss the final obstacle; a barn owl, frozen in the headlights. If only we had some of these…

Claire

Café Connect 7 – Saturday 9th July, New Galloway

2011-07-18T09:52:00.008+01:00

Another early start and another ferry (this time Craignure-Oban) was followed by a long drive down south.

We headed to Kitty’s Tearoom for a pre-Café Connect dinner – if you’re looking for the best traditional tearoom in the UK, this is it.

En-route we spotted the Galloway Kite Trail. Something for me to report back to Dr Rene van der Wal (dot.rural Natural Resource Conservation theme Lead) for the Red Kite project…

Today’s venue? The fantastic CatStrand ("contemporary performance and meeting space"), New Galloway…

Prof Dave Godden (dot.rural Healthcare theme Lead and Co-Director of the Centre for Rural Health, University of Aberdeen) delivered his talk entitled ‘Rural Emergencies: New technologies to aid First Responders’, linking in with our MIME (Managing Information in Medical Emergencies) project.

Quite appropriately, the audience included a Mountain Rescuer and two First Responders.

Dave outlined the changing landscape of healthcare providers, emphasising that its dot.rural (and other research centres) who strive to develop new technologies but it’s the policymakers who, ultimately, decipher the extent of their uptake.

The technology priorities to assist the first person on the scene of an accident: design a device to help decision support in real-time; use the device to monitor the patient’s status whilst being transferred; use the device to accurately collate, conserve and forward the ‘information trail’ gathered over the whole rescue period (using Natural Language Generation). In practice, the design of such a device raises issues of weight, portability and battery life, amongst others.

Dave's 'demo'…

The discussions that followed included…
- From the research point of view, dot.rural are thinking ~10-15 years ahead when designing such technologies.
- In any emergency, there’s a whole chain of people involved during the patient’s transfer. Thus, inconsistencies and mis-information in the information trail are inevitable. Therefore, the aim is to improve on the paper and pencil system currently used, often completed after the event, while considering environment-specific factors such as noisy, dangerous and wet scenarios.
- Accounts from the audience on the value of technology to support First Responders: “there are people who would be more likely to be first responders if some sort of tech was available to support”. Followed by caution from Dave over creating a false sense of security, with the need for basic skills and training not to be replaced.
- Concerns over signal coverage in remote and rural areas and the dependency of such devices on infrastructure.
- Issues of knowing how much data to send on to the respective hospital when monitoring the patient and the impact on information flow.
- Worries over whether the stick-on monitoring pads interfere with a defibrillator and can cope with exceptionally hairy people (they can!).
- Emphasis on the need for training, to support the uptake of devices, whatever the technology.
- Queries over the testing the device; Simulated data is being used in the R&D phase, before being used on real patients - ultimately, real data-sets are required.
- In paperless scenarios where First Responders are asked to justify their advice or actions, there could be a place for new technologies to help.
- Currently, there’s no formal feedback process so, once the patient has arrived at the hospital, mountain rescue teams/First Responders are not updated on their progress or the final outcome. Perhaps new technologies could be used to relay what this information, especially for future training purposes.

This was Dave’s last ever, public talk before retiring from academic and clinical work, later this month. As he embraces retirement and pens his long-awaited first novel, keep your eyes peeled for D. Godden on the shelves of all good book shops…

Claire

Café Connect 6 – Friday 8th July, Isle of Mull

2011-07-13T16:20:00.001+01:00

Reluctantly leaving Knoydart I headed south to Lochaline to catch another ferry (who’s counting?) to Fishnish, Isle of Mull…

Last year, the Ulva School Community Association successfully campaigned to save the community’s only remaining communal asset – Ulva Primary School.

The school pupils totalled 4 last year, this year its 8. The numbers temporarily swelled when it became our next, and undoubtedly the most colourful, Café Connect venue for the night…

…with 18 people attending! Note that the USCA area of Mull has a population of just 110.

The Ulva champion, Carolyne Charrington (Vice Convenor, Ulva School Community Association) originally approached us to host a Café Connect and laid all the groundwork. With Carolyne unable to make it on the night, she passed the baton to Helen Mackay (Convenor, Ulva School Community Association). Helen did a fantastic job in spreading the word, going all out to make the night a success; she made dedicated phone calls to households in the community, stopped people in the street, posted the flyers and even bagged a slot on Oban FM!

Tonight’s speaker was Dr Alasdair Mort (dot.rural Healthcare Research Fellow, Centre for Rural Health, University of Aberdeen) delivering ‘Rural Pain Relief: A digital dose’. The talk linked in with our TOPS (Technology to support Older adults Personal and Social interaction) Healthcare project, and touched on areas such as rural well-being, comfort and friendship.

Alasdair focused on the issues surrounding the ageing populations of rural areas, the management of chronic conditions and that of associated chronic pain (defined as lasting for more than 3 months). It is projected that in 2030, 32% of people will be over 65 years old in the Argyll and Bute area (exceeding the UK average) and thus impacting the challenges of living with a chronic condition.

Alasdair went on to describe that current state of telehealth, telecare and telemedicine, with the possible reduction in face-to-face personal and social interaction.

A quick break, and just time to sample the fantastic rock cakes and the lemoniest lemon drizzle I’ve ever eaten…

From a sample of cake, to a sample of the discussions that emerged…
- Technologies, like those being developed under the TOPS project, “can’t bring people physically closer, but may make them better connected”.
- Concerns over new technologies diverting funding from other medical service provision, culminating in the loss of care.
- Concerns over the rising costs of fuel when making journeys to/from disperse communities for essential, medical reasons.
- The importance of options: if people choose to use technology to support their levels of personal and social interaction in the management of their chronic pain, then this should be available but is not intended to replace any face-to-face interaction currently available.
- The Scottish Government completed an initiative about 10 years ago, delivering computing hardware (a computer, printer and webcam), free Internet access for 1 year (later extended to 3 years), and dedicated training workshops to every household in the area.
- ‘A digital dose’ is really referring to “methods of communication, not pain relief itself”.
- The real demand for remote consultations and diagnoses (supported by new technologies), and promising invaluable reassurance in real-time. This local need links in with another of our Healthcare projects (phase 2) .
- The value in digital pain diaries with a very simple GUI (perhaps on a telephone).

After rescuing the Primary School, the USCA are invigorated, using the school, in place of a village hall, to the max for all sorts of events and workshops.

If you fancy sampling some of their genuine community ‘togetherness’, pop along to the USCA Summer Fete on August 7th. But a word of warning – once there, you might not want to leave!

The evening concluded with a bizarre experience in the Craignure Inn; a ‘push the bottle’ competition which Mat and Alasdair narrowly lost to the locals…

Claire

p.s. Did you catch our previous blog post (Café Connect 5 – Knoydart) on the front page of the Ruralworkspace Daily?

Café Connect 5 – Thursday 7th July, Knoydart

2011-07-12T22:15:00.009+01:00

We made our way from Oban to Mallaig en-route to the next stop, Knoydart. Meanwhile, the Stornoway black pudding safely on its way back to Aberdeen, accompanied by Ruth, to be refrigerated.

The Lonely Planet describes Knoydart as “the only sizable area in Britain that remains inaccessible to the motor car… No road penetrates this wilderness of rugged hills – Inverie, its sole village can only be reached by [Bruce’s!] ferry from Mallaig, or on foot (a tough 16-mile hike)” so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

There’s no denying it; Inverie, Knoydart is a fantastic place. I almost don’t want to tell you about it because I’m definitely coming back. Its the remoteness and the friendly locals that make it so special.

To top it off, we stayed at the Gathering, a superb B&B ‘with a difference’… and with Internet connection to rival Aberdeen City, despite the (almost) non-existent mobile phone coverage.

The Knoydart Café Connect champion, Davie Newton (Local Development Officer, Knoydart Foundation) had done a superb job beforehand spreading the word across the peninsula, and beyond with attendees making a dedicated overnight trip from across the water on the Isle of Eigg!

Prof Claire Wallace (dot.rural Enterprise & Culture theme Lead and newly appointed Co-Vice Principal of Research and Knowledge Exchange, University of Aberdeen) was there to deliver her talk, entitled ‘Rural Futures: people + business + technology = sustainability’, to a strong turnout of 13 (population just 120 people). This meant the wonderful Knoydart Tearoom and Pottery was almost at full capacity!

Claire set the scene with an overview of our Enterprise & Culture projects: SIRA, CURIOS and ASSURE. CURIOS, and a possible extension to it – a whole new dot.rural project! – became the main focus of the 90-minute discussion that followed.

A sample of some of the discussions…
- Economic and copyright queries over ‘ownership’ of people’s memories.
- Demand to extend projects like CURIOS, beyond a family history recording tool of ‘who married who’, linking into a bigger historical (and possibly an agricultural and land use) context… “Not just for community history, but for community futures”.
- Questions over the quality of information, and the filtering of what’s input into such databases, drawing parallels with the unmoderated world of Wikipedia.
- How does the technology behind such databases distinguish between, say, 100 people of the same name?
- The real need to search within, and also between, community databases and records, with a possible temporal element incorporated into the interface.
- A need to map community initiatives and infrastructure schemes (sewerage, electricity, broadband etc) to facilitate full-scale knowledge sharing across the UK, and in Europe.

The ‘quote of the evening’ has to go to Alex Boden for “we want to turn our resources into cash”, demonstrating the need for a new, effective community business model, in a broader sense…
- There are only 3 indigenous people currently left on Eigg.
- The period of 1900-1970 local history is rapidly disappearing. There’s a desperate need to "capture this before it disappears".
- How can technology deliver new ways of creating a sustainable economy, particularly outside of the (limited) tourist season?
- Similarities with technologies being developed for walking tours on Eigg, with those presented at the Digital Futures 2011 conference and off-the-shelf applications.
- Concerns over tech-supported walking guides reducing the social contact between locals and tourists, with a potentially negative impact.
- The Hebrides.net project delivering ~6 MB broadband to 40 subscribers on Eigg for ~£15 per month (with a BT backhaul). This will be delivering connectivity to the Isle of Muck next week (July 2011). How does this compare to the current provision in Knoydart? £43 per month for 1 MB.
- Practical issues experienced with LEADER project and funding applications.

Afterwards, it was great to chat with Isla and Rhona (Knoydart Tearoom and Pottery) about life in Knoydart, the role of Facebook in the community and its impact on their business… and the infamous New Year democratic discos!

Thanks to Isla and Rhona for opening up late, experimenting with this new format and for putting on a special ‘Café Connect menu’, and big thanks to Davie.

With the obvious successes of Ravenspoint and Knoydart under our belt, we’re now at the halfway point: 5 down, 5 to go.

Claire

Café Connect 4 – Wednesday 6th July, Isle of Barra

2011-07-11T23:57:00.009+01:00

Leaving the peat bogs of Lewis behind, I headed south via the stunning beaches of Harris, to catch the first of three ferries for the day (Leverburgh - Bernerary) with no contingency built into the schedule…

…and then through North and South Uist to catch the second ferry (Eriskay –Ardmhor, Barra). When checking-in at Eriskay I noticed a local flyer advertising the ‘Mobile Chippy Bus’. Genius.

Once on, I spotted some 'Flexible Integrated Transport Services' in action! The Grillburger van man was distributing his deliveries to other (non-food business) drivers on the ferry, for wider circulation afterwards.

On the ferry some eager passengers pointed out basking sharks – with the Captain halting the ferry mid-crossing, allowing them to pass – and later, a group of seals.

Once on Barra, and with minutes to spare, there was no time to hop over to Kisimul Castle…

… before locating the elusive ‘Youth Café’ hidden within the Community Hall and the not-so-elusive speaker, Ruth Wilson (dot.rural Enterprise & Culture Postgraduate Researcher).

The champion, Murdo, eventually located the keys to the Hall and Café Connect number 4 got underway.

Unfortunately Ruth delivered her talk, entitled ‘Facebook and the Fate of Barra: The digital evolution of social life on a small island’, to one of our smaller audiences – in the rural locations we’re reminded that it really is all about quality not quantity – but stimulated, undoubtedly, the most interactive and in-depth discussion to follow a talk.

Perhaps it was the earlier start time (all other Café Connects commenced at 7 pm, unrestricted by the ferry timetables), or that such an initiative is new to Castlebay, or the fact that the social media networks weren’t fully utilised locally (i.e. the Siar FM Facebook page) beforehand...

With fantastic input from two members of the audience, Jane and Peter, the following points were raised during the 90-minute discussion:
- The impact of the Internet in the media, e.g. the Pope’s first Tweet.
- “Whatever wonderful things the Internet might bring, a hug is not one of them.”
- Isolation, community and well being all supported (or not) through social media platforms such as Facebook.
- The different uses of social media in remote and rural areas, compared with towns and cities, and its affect in weakening/strengthening community.
- Parallels with the introduction of previous communication methods (such as the telegram, the telephone…) receiving similar receptions.
- The blurring of social lives; where does one end (‘real’ friendship) and the other (online relationships) being?
- Examples of local uses of Facebook included playing scrabble with relatives living in other places, and connecting with other, similar businesses (in this case a network of proofreaders).
- Those living on Barra not really considering themselves as ‘remote’.

It was also great to learn that Barra boasts an avid group of ‘Bumble Bee counters’ (something which may be of particular relevance to Dr Rene van der Wal and our Bumble Bee, Natural Resource Conservation project) and the suggestion to explore potential collaborations with the Co-operative.

From these discussions with real end users, there’s no doubt that Ruth’s research has been actively shaped.

It already appears that the audience turnout is directly dependent on the efforts of the community champions, and is inversely linked to the local population size; the fewer people in the community, the stronger the community networks and thus, the greater the demand and demonstrable support for such initiatives. After today’s Café Connect, it also seems that a smaller audience fosters more engaging, and multi-way, discussions.

So, what next? Another ferry! We boarded the Castlebay-Oban ferry and once we’d set sail, we were closely tailed by a group of playful dolphins.

How much can you squeeze into one day? 226 miles, three ferries and a Café Connect.

Claire

Café Connect 3 – Tuesday 5th July, Isle of Lewis

2011-07-07T15:20:00.012+01:00

Tuesday kicked off with an early-morning drive from Bonar Bridge to Ullapool in time for the ferry to Stornoway and to meet up with tonight’s speaker, Dr David Corsar (dot.rural Computing Science Research Fellow).

Once in the Outer Hebrides (for the first time!) we popped in to the famous Charles MacLeod butchers for a Stornoway black pudding (or 3!)…

…ticked off another stone circle at Callanish and went into the blackhouse at Arnol… and came out smelling like a kipper!

Thought for the day: Forget me, more importantly, how long can a black pudding survive on the road?!

The Ravenspoint Café Connect community champion – John Randall (Chairman, Co-Chomunn na Pairc, the Pairc Community Co-operative) – cleverly tied in our talk date with the launch of the brand-new extension to the Ravenspoint Community Café.

The café, funded by Big Lottery Fund, HIE and CnES, is the latest addition to the Co-Chomunn na Pairc community enterprise. Locals and tourists can also find the Ravenspoint community shop, museum, archive and hostel on site.

The community turned out in full force, supporting John, the new café extension and the Café Connect pilot. During the speeches and obligatory ceremonial ribbon-cutting…

…the supporters were literally queuing out of every doorway.

David delivered his talk on ‘Driving Rural Transport: Mainland technologies for a small island?’ to a 24-strong audience!

David introduced the two dot.rural Accessibility & Mobilities projects, FITS and IRP, proposing that the Q&A session that followed be used to discuss the demand for, and applicability of, such initiatives within the context of island communities.

Tonight’s Café Connect turned out to be our most successful one yet. The audience was sizable – given these are all taking place in remote and/or rural communities – and demographically varied. Attendees included Donnie Morrison (Director of Co-Chomunn na Pairc, the Pairc Community Co-operative and HIE employee), Helen (Community Development Officer) and Malcolm Burr (Chief Executive of the Western Isles Council).

The Q&A session prompted lively discussion and lots of comments for me to feedback to the dot.rural researchers, potentially shaping the research. The venue (and the views!) was superb and there was a real sense of occasion.

A summary of the discussions…
- Reassessing the community bus use (expertly spotted beforehand by David, parked outside) which is currently estimated to be in use ~<5% of the time!
- Utilising the current hospital transport provision to maximum effect
- Concerns over the cost of fuel and the socio-economic impact on rural transport services
- The idea of having one ‘shared’ car per village, or even investigating what the optimal number of shared cars per village would be.
- The tensions of cheapened transport provision vs rural development and the potential (negative) socio-economic impact, e.g. free/subsidised transport to supermarkets in larger villages and towns reducing spend in community shops
- Looking into the introduction of ‘driver incentives’ (“driver is key”) when relying on goodwill is not sustainable.
- An idea of the timescales involved when tailoring such systems to each individual community.
- Issues over the legalities and ethics associated with FITS-type schemes and wider concerns for the ‘disengaged’, those who are not computer literate or who chose not to be digitally involved.

One member of the audience, who may turn up at Lizzy Tait’s ‘Power of Social Media’ Café Connect in Drumnadrochit on Monday 11th July, recorded the audio of David’s talk…

I managed to get online briefly (if I lived in the Outer Hebrides I don’t think I could ‘live’ without an iPhone) and finally tweet.

Unwinding over a couple of bottles of Celtic Black Ale back at the spotless Loch Erisort Inn, I knew that, if nothing else, the Café Connect principle has been proven tonight through this success at Ravenspoint.

Over the Café Connect series, I’m becoming more and more convinced that the success of such a pilot, and any follow-on initiatives, hinges on the champion; their place within the local community, the connections they have and their efforts invested in promoting the event locally beforehand. John has been an absolute star.

I’ll definitely be back. If not to stay in the Ravenspoint Hostel and (re!)sample the fantastic cupcakes, then to catch-up with John.

What’s the most impressive part of the evening? Being privileged enough to see such a focused and community-spirited group of people working together towards common goals.

Sadly there’s no time to see the looms weaving Harris Tweed with this gruelling schedule. Tomorrow, three ferries, a Café Connect in Castlebay and a 5.30 am start to check out the Harris beaches all lie in store. Yawn.

Claire

Café Connect 2 – Monday 4th July, Bonar Bridge

2011-07-07T14:40:00.008+01:00

Arriving in Scrabster I thought it was only right to ‘tick off’ the most northerly point on mainland UK; John O’ Groats.

Not only is John O’Groats the most depressing and toot-tastic place in Scotland, it turns out its not even the most northerly point. In both the natural beauty and the northerly claim-to-fame stakes, Dunnet Head wins.

Dr Arjuna Sathiaseelan (dot.rural Communications Engineering Research Fellow) led the second Café Connect talk on ‘Pervasive Internet: Rural reality or pipe dream?’ at the Bonar Bridge Community Hall, with free tea and biscuits laid on.

Arjuna’s engaging talk spanned the complete evolution of the Internet as we currently know it; the difference between the internet and the Internet; and what the online future promises.

He also suggested that satellite technologies, although often seen as a last resort for fast, next generation connection, may actually be an appropriate option for remote and/or rural communities (linking into the dot.rural SIRA, DART and ASSURE Enterprise and Culture projects).

The lively debate that followed included…
- Issues associated with satellite broadband: What happens if a sea gull lands on your satellite dish? Will a satellite Internet connection still hold out during heavy snowfall?
- Real concerns regarding the affordability of satellite broadband for an area like Sutherland with lower than average salaries: An introductory price of ~£30/month was deemed too high, even for a converged (e.g. TV, radio, telephone and broadband) service.
- With Sutherland being the “least populated area in Europe” (~1 person/2.2 square miles) what alternative broadband technologies are feasible for local communities?
- The frustration experienced with current download speeds and concerns over any potential impact on feelings of isolation associated with a change to the current broadband provision.

John McMurray (Community Outreach Worker, Bridge Project, Dornoch Firth Group) attended the talk and, as a result, is particularly keen to liaise with our dot.rural Co-Investigators leading the SIRA project (Prof Claire Wallace and Prof Gorry Fairhurst) exploring potential community case study opportunities. John also mentioned similar community initiatives such as Cybermoor and Wray (both well known to dot.rural) and the Renfrewshire Council of Voluntary Services’ broadband project (previously off dot.rural’s radar!).

Quote from an audience member: “Its not the technology that matters, it’s the way people use it.”

Claire

Café Connect 1 – Sunday 3rd July, Kirkwall

2011-07-07T11:36:00.010+01:00

Dr Rene van der Wal (Reader at the University of Aberdeen and dot.rural’s Natural Resource Conservation theme Lead) kicked off the Café Connect pilot series in the awe-inspiring setting of St. Magnus Cathedral, Orkney with his talk entitled ‘Birds, Bees and Digital Conservation’.

I (obviously!) know Rene’s an ecologist but, still, his passion for birds really struck me on the ferry from Aberdeen; while everyone else was (unsuccessfully) battling with the inevitable seasickness, Rene set up camp at the stern, bird spotting armed with binoculars and his ears acutely tuned to squawks.

Before the talk, I squeezed in a quick visit to the Tomb of the Eagles and the Neolithic village of Skara Brae, shamelessly spreading the word en-route!

A slight ‘teething problem’ [no banner stand pole] meant we resorted to tying the dot.rural banner stand… to the pulpit!

Despite the cheesy sound bites on BBC Radio Orkney beforehand, the turn out was lower than expected; perhaps due to the distracting sunshine that day, or maybe the fact that one-off pilot initiatives, by definition, haven’t yet built up a known and engaging brand within the local area…

Nevertheless, Rene’s talk was superb – asking whether digital innovation can inspire, or even re-connect people to our natural environment – detailing the dot.rural NRC projects on red kites and bees, complete with an interactive ‘identify the bumble bee’ exercise (c.f. the dot.rural bee project).

The audience included representatives from the Orkney Field Club (Penny) and the RSPB (Kenneth) volunteers. Hence, when combined with the talk topics, the Q&A session ventured into discussion of: OrkBird, a well-established, local bird identifying and audio/visual recording community database, similar to iSpot; the potential sociological impact(s) of crowd-sourcing methods; the challenges associated with working within such an interdisciplinary research group; and the importance of such community initiatives in maximising the involvement of people in the different layers of natural conservation. There was also lots of discussion of how the school communities and voluntary organisations of Orkney can get involved with the red kite story-telling and the bumble bee recording projects, respectively.

The night ended with a fascinating impromptu cathedral tour from Fran with her excellent and very animated storytelling, revealing the hiding (and final resting) place of St Magnus’ remains – hint, look for the marked stone in the south-east pillar – and bringing the legends to life.

As the sun was setting we headed to the standing Stones of Stenness…

…and the Ring of Brodgar where Rene suggested I eat (yes eat!) some Bell Heather…

…before preparing for an early (5.00 am!!!) check-in for the Stromness-Scrabster ferry on Day 2.

Claire

Enterprisers

2011-06-09T16:00:00.038+01:00

Enthusiasm,
Networking,
Teamwork,
Energy,
Relax,
Passion,
Regeneration,
Inspiration,
Satisfaction,
Engagement,
Reflection,
Sparkle
....and more and more....
...what's that? It's only a little part of what you can get from Enterprisers.

What's Enterprisers? It is a programme run by the University of Cambridge.
It is all about developing entrepreneurial skills, from creativity and marketing to communication. However, there are loads of other exciting things that one can learn and practice. More information can be found in Enterprisers.

This course is perfect for people interested to start a business but anyway this should not stop others to participate because the skills that you learn and practice are useful for all types of jobs.

Anyway after attending the workshop last week in Cambridge I can tell you that this is not only about skills, it's a change of life...
I will not describe what activities we have been doing because otherwise I will ruin the surprise effect but I can tell you that you will find yourself doing all sorts of activities, playing, acting, dancing, singing, eating, thinking, presenting without even realizing it.
And I'm sure there is something useful and funny to bring home for everyone.

...It's been a week and I feel like it happened only in my dreams... such amazing people, an incredible team "Green Stars", interesting entrepreneurs with different stories, a great group of facilitators and the two most amazing mentors we could have ever had...

The workshop is a really intense 4 days journey but at the end you feel like you have been away for months. It started with a deep work on ourselves, our objectives and motivations and by the second day I had forgotten all the dark days of my PhD :) :)

The best point is that I didn't realise how much I learnt in such a short period of training. Although the usual training courses are interesting I found most of them a bit "boring" ....but this one is just so dynamic and funny and extra-creative and.... just great! And I was so lucky to be in the Green Stars team, they were extraordinary and we have been working very well together... And here is our amazing GREEN ROCKET ready for the moon!!!... keep dreaming!!

It's been a very refreshing experience, it's good to change environment and meet such great people, it's been an explosion of positive energy and enthusiasm. When you are overwhelmed with many things to do it's likely that you forget the motivation that inspired your choices in the first place... Well this course has helped me to rediscovered the motivations for which I started my PhD....

A big thanks goes to the Green Stars which have made my experience just Amazing!!!

And here some pictures of our work in progress... (Giant Jenga and Brainstorming)

...And the launch to the Moon.....with Parachute....

Alice

SICSA PhD Conference 2011

2011-05-26T17:35:00.024+01:00

Hello All,

After our riddle, I'm now sure you are all keen to know what the SICSA PhD conference is. SICSA stands for Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance and involves all the Computer Science and Informatics departments in Scotland. The Phd Conference is done by students for students. It is a great opportunity for all PhD students of these universities to meet and discuss about their research as well as participate in workshops and talks from experts in the computing research community. The conference is organised by enthusiastic PhD students in collaboration with a team of passionate professors, lectures, officers and assistants.

Enough with the technical details, you can find more in SICSA and SICSAconf, and let's talk about the WONDERS of this year conference.

The conference took place in the Informatics Forum, University of Edinburgh, from Monday the 23^rd to Wednesday the 25^th of May 2011. Theme of this year: "Does our computing research have an impact on society at large?". Andy, Peter, Toni and I went along with other six students from the Computing Science Department of Aberdeen University.

The conference opened Monday with a warm welcome from Prof. Ian Sommerville and Prof. Rod Murray-Smith, followed by a brilliant talk from Prof. Harold Thimbleby on "Secrets of successful research". Few of those: read at least five theses, start to write your own now, broaden your understanding of the subject through the help of a mentor more aligned with your topic of study or visit someone whose research you admire...

… a secret was missing though... what is the Inspiring Muse of each PhD student? Where did you have your best brainstorming ever? The answer is … a Pub Session!! To comply with this PhD survival norm we hired out the local student bar (the Tron) for the evening. Great opportunity to socialise and discuss about the hidden secrets of computer scientists cheered up by two comedians from the local comedy scene of Edinburgh. On the menu Tennent's, Python, weddings, Talisker, p=?np and much more...

Tuesday was the workshop day. Transferrable skills talks in the morning and four societal challenge in the afternoon. Green IT, Collective Intelligence, Security and Digital Inclusion with over 20 panelists discussing about what are challenges of today's society. How can computers encourage individuals to lead a more "green" lifestyle? How can we improve the integration of new information technologies on the modern society? How can we deal and prevent cyber attacks on secured information? How can we incorporate collective intelligence for useful purposes? If you want more information check out the slides here . A note to remember that dot.rural and Aberdeen Uni were well represented by David Corsar with his talk on "The collectively informed (and intelligent) rural passenger" and Edoardo Pignotti with "Collective intelligence and provenance in digital social research".

And then off to the dinner in an amazing place called 'The Caves" in the heart of Edinburgh's Old Town. Good food and good wine, all accompanied by a talk from the writer Ken MacLeod on robots and Artificial Intelligence from a SciFi point of view.

Throughout the conference, over 80 posters had been presented. This was an excellent opportunity for every student to engage in discussions with other students working on similar projects but also to get to know different aspects of the computer science research. And (if I may add) to understand that we are all on the same boat... fighting to find our spot in the community :P !! A competition among posters took place as incentive to contribute in this think tank. The competition ended with 11 finalists and 2 best poster winners. The good news is that three people from Aberdeen Uni made to the final. Two of them made dot.rural proud!! Andy with his poster on "Preventing Profiling in Competitive Communities" and Peter with "Alleviating stress by giving the perception of having a virtual teammate". Well done to them and to all the presenters!!

We closed with an inspiring talk of Prof. John Aycock on "Things they never taught me in grad school". Few tips to remember during the PhD: find an hobby that you are not good at, think after your Phd, and share your knowledge with the public!!

In conclusion, it was a great conference with great opportunities, great people and a lot of good FUNNN!!

A big thanks goes to SICSA and the organisers. And to the staff of Pollock Halls where we stayed.

Here some pictures from the conference...

- Conference moments:

- Pollock Halls:

- dot.rural Delegation

and few more from SICSA PhD Conference 2011 on Flickr:

- Poster sessions with Toni and Andy

- Prof. John Aycock on "A Phd Student crisis of faith"

- Work in progress

- Me desperately trying to defend my research... (I lost!)

Alice with a big help from Andy, Peter and Toni

Riddle....

2011-05-25T19:37:00.009+01:00

...3 days + 13 Scottish universities + over 100 Computer Science PhD students ...

...19 people + 5 months of organisation + 7 meetings + over 300 emails...

...4 keynote speakers + 10 workshops + 20 panelists...

...4 poster sessions + 80 posters + 11 finalists (2 dot.rural ...rocks!! ) + 2 winners...

...geeky discussions + pub + FUN...

….. = any guess??

….. it's the great SICSA PhD Conference 2011 …

More on this screen … when we will recover!!

Alice

Highlands and Islands Enterprise Knowledge Transfer Network Event - 12th April

2011-04-14T13:44:00.008+01:00

Event details:
The aim of this event was to showcase the Technology Strategy Board's (TSB) Knowledge Transfer Networks (KTNs) and opportunities for businesses and academics. There was also representation from Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Enterprise and The Scottish Government.

I was interested in attending this event as I was keen on hearing more about KTN activity and the TSB in general. The first few sessions showcased KTNs from a TSB perspective and introduced the TSB's '_connect' website (ktn.innovateuk.org) that provides an opportunity to keep track of what each KTN is doing. I thought that the website in particular provided an excellent opportunity to keep up-to-speed with what is happening at TSB; you could also find people with specific expertise.

After the morning sessions we had to choose from one of three talks. I attended the discussion on digital healthcare, which included information on telehealth/telecare/m-health etc and had input from various KTNs including HealthTech and Medicines, Digital, Creative Industries and Electronics, Sensors, Photonics.

We then had lunch (sandwiches, wraps, sausage rolls, fruit salad - nice) and networked with other delegates. The day finished with a Q&A session with a panel...although only about half of the delegates were left which was a bit of a shame.

All in all, a good event. We handed out some info on Cafe Connect and a lot of people came to see us at our dot.rural stand - thank you v much to Nimbe for bringing all the showcase material on the train! We also took a couple of photos...

If you want to watch any of the keynote speeches then you can access them at:
http://dpdigitalmedia.co.uk/ktnlive.html

Alasdair

Satellites in Space: Launching Internet for Everyone!

2011-03-18T14:09:00.011Z

National Science and Engineering Week 2011
Thursday 17th March 2011, King's College Conference Centre, University of Aberdeen

Last night's Satellites in Space event took us on a journey; from building satellites to shuttle launches, and back down to earth again with Internet service provision for rural areas.

Watch the full recording of the event here soon!

dot.rural’s Professor Gorry Fairhurst introduced presentations by four experts from the space and satellite industries before chairing the interactive audience Q&A session.

The panel of guest speakers included: Dr Taj Sturman (Senior Systems Engineer, Astrium Ltd) on how to build a satellite and launch it into space...

...Mr Paul Febvre (Satellite System Architect, Inmarsat Ltd) - the man with all the props!...

...Mr Graham Peters (Director, Avanti Consulting, Avanti Communications Ltd) asking how can satellites ‘up there’ provide universal Internet access ‘down here’?...

...and Dr Nick Race (School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University) demonstrating the real social impact of Internet provision via the Wray case study...

This timely event marked the launch of dot.rural’s DART (Digital Advanced Rural Testbed) and SIRA (Satellite Internet Rural Access) projects.

The event was preceded by an informal exhibition of dot.rural projects, presented by Ruth, Nimbe, Leanne, Nico, Arjuna and Hien.

Hopefully, this one-off showcase will be followed by more public engagement opportunities and collaborations with these partners.

The events for National Science and Engineering Week continue until Sunday, including tonight's Bring Your Own Brain... but for dot.rural at least, its all over!

Three events later, ~150 members of the public engaged... and we're left wondering, what's the plan for next year?! :)
Claire

Cafe Scientifique in the Shire - Can Technology be Persuasive?

2011-03-17T08:58:00.005Z

National Science and Engineering Week 2011
Tuesday 15th March 2011, Woodend Barn, Banchory

For a special National Science and Engineering Week edition of Cafe Sci in the Shire, dot.rural's Hien Nguyen (Computing Science Research Fellow) asked 'can computers be persuasive?'.

Hien's interactive and free public talk formed part of the established Cafe Sci in the Shire programme and attracted an enthusiastic crowd of ~40 people.

Are the people of Banchory now more aware of dot.rural and the Digital Economy programme? Tick!

Do we have a better understanding of the thought processes behind Amazon's 'one click', and the Swedish piano staircase as an alternative to escalators? Tick!

Are we equipped to 'defend' ourselves against the more negative implications of persuasive technologies? Tick!

Do we now know how these technologies can be used for the better, particularly in the field of Healthcare? Tick!

For more information on the Cafe Sci in the Shire programme, or indeed on any of the other Cafe Sci events...

Cafe Sci in the City, Waterstones, Aberdeen: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/science/cafescience/CafeSci_CITY_2011_Season5.pdf
Cafe Sci in the Shire, Woodened Barn, Banchory: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/science/cafescience/CafeSci_SHIRE_2011.pdf
Cafe MED, Suttie Centre, Foresterhill, Aberdeen: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/science/cafescience/CafeMed_2011.pdf
Cafe Controversial, Satrosphere Science Centre, Aberdeen: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/science/cafescience/cafecontroversial_programme2010.pdf
Cafe Light, Lighthouse Museum, Fraserburgh: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/science/cafescience/CafeLight2010_programme.pdf

Great job Hien!
Claire

SpeedScience - scientists and the public interacting against the clock!

2011-03-15T16:15:00.023Z

National Science and Engineering Week 2011
Monday 14th March 2011, Under the Hammer, Aberdeen

Last night's innovative Speed Science event proved a great success!

A brief insight into this unique event:
What happens when you take the quick-fire Speed Dating format and invite scientists to present their cutting-edge research in an exciting and innovative way? Can they beat the clock and impress you, to be voted the ‘winner’? Come along to this unique event to hear snapshots of science, before voting for your favourite researcher. You will get the chance to hear more from the ‘winner’ and join in with the lively discussion that follows. The clock’s ticking!

I’d like to thank the following people for their parts in delivering this: Alice, Andy, Chris B, Chris M, David, Gina, Lizzy, Peter, Hien, Rob, Ruth and Toni...

A special mention for, and congratulations to, Chris B (the ‘winner’ with 9 votes and also the birthday boy)...

to Ruth (2nd place with 5 votes)...

... and to Rob (3rd place with 4 votes).

The official University of Aberdeen photographer popped in, along with Laura Young & co (some RGU journalism students) to record the action for coursework. Watch the finished footage here.

Laura Young and the RGU camera crew...

Also, we had a surprise visit from STV! They filmed and interviewed for a short piece (watch it by clicking 'here' [2 mins in]). You can read their associated Speed Science article here: http://local.stv.tv/aberdeen/news/13149-speed-dating-for-scientists/

Mark Mathers (STV video journalist) capturing the magic...

In terms of public audience, I counted a whopping 47. I don’t think we could of hoped for more from a brand new format and venue... or had room for more!

The calm before the storm...

And SpeedScience in action...

The evaluation forms are positive, with a couple commenting on the periodic 'chaos' that ensued every time the researchers were buzzed on to the next table, and many overwhelmed by the “enthusiasm” in the room!

Looking forwards...
- Perhaps other researchers from within dot.rural would want to repeat this, in a month or two?
- Perhaps other research groups, of any discipline, across the University would want to take this and run with it? i.e. dot.rural could facilitate a regular series of these, opened out to all researchers at the University, but each one (say monthly) based on a different theme/topic... First Engineering, then Medicine, Ecology, Maths, Chemistry...
- Any thoughts on a 'Speed Science for Schools' version? I can feel another dot.rural schools tour coming on (uh-oh!). Every school has a canteen (tables and chairs are all that's required!) and the fast-paced, interactive and fresh format could really suit the younger audience...

And finally, Speed Science is the first of three dot.rural National Science and Engineering Week events taking place this week: http://www.dotrural.ac.uk/getinvolved

Speaking of other dot.rural NSEW events, I'm off to hear Hien's Cafe Sci in the Shire talk about computers being persuasive!

Big thanks to all those involved,
Claire

Grant Writing Workshop Launch

2011-02-09T09:32:00.002Z

Myself and Ed attended the Grant Writing Workshop Launch on 26th Jan. Although it was a bit unclear as to what to expect (apart from a free lunch), the main part turned out to be a talk given by the principle (Prof Diamond) on his 13 points for grant writing. Everyone at the talk seemed to find them very useful, so I have listed them below as they may be of use to you in the future.

Professor Ian Diamond’s 13 Points for Grant Proposals

1. Discuss your brilliant idea with peers , formalize the problem, convince people that it is exciting, ground it in theory, make it clear.

2. Give an informal seminar on your idea, expanding audients to out-with immediate friends/peers

3. Ask yourself “can it really be done alone?”

* What help is required – is it single- or multi-disciplinary

* If multidisciplinary, you must be prepared to go outside of your comfort zone. Ask do you really need these people? Is there the correct chemistry between you?

* Ask yourself: can you/the others deliver on time; what’s their track record? Ask yourself: “Do I/the team have the skills to do what we are promising?”

4. Are initial results/pump priming (e.g. proof of concept) required for the grant?

5. Write the proposal

* Who to apply to? Research councils, charities; check their requirements and priorities. Speak to peers. Phone and talk to the organization about your idea.

* Structure of proposal:

- Form the problem properly; grounded in theory, describe context/framework your idea sits in

- What is the overall aim, the vision, and practical objectives

- How will it be done (research design) – scale, timing, resources; “don’t try to run before you can walk” regarding amount asking for – demonstrate that you can manage the project, and ensure you can deliver what you say you will in the timeframe (related to resources asked for)

6. Be clear what your research design will allow you to say about your results

7. Describe your methods clearly

* Ensure they are sensible; briefly describe why you did not chose other approaches; don’t be a “trust me, I’ll do it” person

* Data

- If require access to an existing data collection, you include necessary costs

- If collecting it, ensure you will make it open and available

- Demonstrate you know how you will analyse the data

8. Ethics – do you have/will seek/do not need ethical approach

9. Have you thought of all the difficulties that may arise while doing the research?

10. Is the bibliography reasonable? Ensure you have included the big names in the area and what they are doing

11. Are there any non-academic users of this research? Are there any co-funders?

12. Ensure dissemination activities (impact pathway) are included (both academic and non-academic if appropriate).

* Do you intend to co-produce work with relevant parties, or do you have intended beneficiaries? If so, they should be involved at the start.

13. May happen out of serendipity; in which case, should you are committed to take it forward if it does arise

14. Need an impact statement:

a. Demonstrate that the work has potential beneficiaries. Are beneficiaries involved?

b. If opportunities arise “serendipity”, how do you take the opportunities forward?

If successful in getting funded: deliver, deliver, deliver (what you said you would). Don’t stress about it if it doesn’t work out, as long as you can show the work was carried out properly.

If not successful, get a senior person to sit down with you, look at the grant proposal and the feedback, and resubmit/submit elsewhere. When resubmitting, including a covering note listing the changes.

Initial draft; David Corsar; 26/01/2011

Edited by; Edoardo Pignotti; 26/01/2011

David

Cross-College Impact Workshop, University of Aberdeen

2011-01-24T09:38:00.006Z

Wednesday 19th January 2011

I signed up to attend the University's first cross-college impact workshop, not really knowing what to expect or if I should/shouldn't be there, but curious following the impact discussions during the recent National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) conference.

The full collection of slides from the workshop can be downloaded here.

The agenda set the scene...
"This workshop will explore how staff at the University of Aberdeen can enhance the societal and economic impact of their research. Staff will also have an opportunity to feed into the development of a series of training workshops for 2011 designed to enhance our impact by learning how to more effectively engage end-users throughout the research process."

Mark Reed (Acting Director of ACES) chaired the discussions and Dominic Houlihan (Vice Principal for Research and Innovation) stood in for the Principal, Ian Diamond. It's no secret that Ian Diamond is a passionate supporter of the case for impact with research.

Dominic talked about:
- the 'indicators' used for identifying high-quality impact case studies across the five research areas, i.e. fundamental research with non-academic, traceable, and significant impact, reaching beyond the local;
- the difficulties with submitting interdisciplinary (e.g. dot.rural) case studies when no interdisciplinary assessment group exists, and the need to tailor case studies to specific assessment panel(s);
- the "significant" and 'non fluffy' contribution that public engagement events can make to impact case studies;
- the committees or panels who judge these case studies not being strictly academic, but rather comprising ~40% academics and ~60% 'users';
- and referred us to the impact case studies on the REF website - take a looky here.

Before the break we heard from each of the colleges in turn, with impact case studies from Jane Geddes (College of Arts and Social Sciences), Wendy Graham (College of Life Sciences and Medicine), and dot.rural's John Nelson (College of Physical Sciences).

Jane Geddes' (Professor of History of Art) hilarious presentation of the CASS impact case study, entitled 'three impact case studies in History of Art', spanned:
- from medieval door hinges, to the the Dover Castle regeneration scheme and a special Channel 4 'Time Team' feature;
- from establishing a museum for pictish stones at St. Vigeans, Arbroath, to a personal voyage of discovery in a cave in Socotra, and the publication of a book entitled 'The Temenos Academy: Blackers, Beasts and the Bestiary', with a plethora of famous patrons... counting the Dalai Lama amongst them!;
- from the St. Albans Psalter - a previously inaccessible, rare book in Germany - and a worldwide exhibition, to it now being a core text on the U.S. school syllabus... not forgetting the case for 'Christina goes to Hollywood' (the big time!).

Jane's slides attempt to summarise the vast, non-academic and rather unexpected impact of the projects she presented, including: visitor awards, re-skilling and training craftsmen, increasing visitor figures, spin-off CD guides, outreach lecture tours, school visits, books, exhibitions, and, of course, publications.

Jane's retrospective 'top tips' for achieving impact were:
- select a rich topic;
- innovate;
- foster partnerships with sponsors;
- develop an outreach audience.

Wendy Graham (Professor of Obstetric Epidemiology) presented the Immpact project ("impact with two 'm's!") - a global research initiative for the evaluation of safe motherhood intervention strategies.

Wendy described the "impact onion", explaining that its not clear which unit of assessment the Immpact project falls into. Is it 'policy'? 'Medicine'? 'Economics'? 'Social Science'?...

She emphasised the need to start such potentially high-impact projects by asking the key, end-user stakeholders questions and proposed to add 'influence' to Dominic's indicators.

Outputs of the Immpact project - many of which are still ongoing - include: strengthening research capacity; secondment to DFID; publications; public engagement; a successful bid for the largest single award at the University (~£20m); circulation of a viral film (watch it here); high-profile conference invitations, e.g. from Ban Ki-moon; reaching the G8 and the UN general assembly; and employing ~250 people in developing countries.

Finally, Wendy urged us to consider the 'presentation' of impact and the potential value of associated, powerful and emotive imagery.

John Nelson (Professor of Transport Studies) then went on to present the COPS case study on 'supporting the development of local sustainable transport solutions'.

John referred to the Yellow School Bus Commission and the 'smarter choices' initiative.

Outputs from the former included media activity, follow-on funding, and a new perspective on peer review. Meanwhile, public engagement opportunities, productivity and employment, policy guidance, and safety, economic and health implications were all presented as outputs from the smarter choices Scottish Government initiative.

Questions - relating to the research timeline (i.e. how recent should the original research be? and how far back should researchers be looking?), the balance of project success and quality impact vs luck or coincidence (i.e. should researchers aim to be more reactive vs proactive?), value for money (i.e. an indicator employed by research councils, but not an impact metric?), the challenges of building a case for impact particularly for early-stage career researchers, and the potential for a 'template' to capture impact across the board - formed the basis of the discussions that followed. An additional discussion centred on the level of institutional support which may/must be provided.

After the break, we heard from Liz Rattray (Deputy Director, Research & Innovation, University of Aberdeen) and Paul van Gardingen (Strategic Advisor on Impact to the ESRC-DFID Joint Scheme for Research on International Development) on 'funding opportunities to enhance the impact of your research' and 'learning how to achieve excellence with impact', respectively.

Liz prompted us to consider the 'routes' to impact and referred us to the Research Council UK (RCUK) 'Knowledge Transfer Portal'. The routes fall under three categories: outputs (e.g. papers, patents etc), mechanisms (e.g. Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, exchanges, consultancy, engagement etc) and impact (e.g. policy change, jobs, health benefits etc).

Liz suggested that 'people and exchange programmes' are perhaps under-utilised and that this may be one particular area to focus and expand on.

She also pointed us towards the Scottish Economics and Social Science Knowledge Exchange Network event taking place on 23rd February 2011 in Edinburgh (contact csid@abdn.ac.uk for more information).

For more information on funding opportunities, Liz referred us to the Research and Innovation web pages here.

Lastly, Liz took questions on:
- the RCUK knowledge transfer portal;
- the previous NERC scheme that brought smaller projects together under one umbrella project, to have a bigger impact en masse;
- the potential to grow the ERASMUS student exchange programme;
- and the link between consultancy opportunities and REF.

Paul presented an Amazonian case study aligned with his research interests, explained that he believes "research excellence is the starting point - necessary but not sufficient" with a credible pathway to impact also needed, and declared "impact is about people" the take home message.

He also highlighted the importance of a "narrative, story approach to impact" as well as capacity building, recommended that there may often be more than one pathway to impact, and suggested that research councils are increasingly focusing on longer-term, larger and more collaborative research projects with impact.

With regards to 'telling the story' - potentially as a way of bridging the Arts and Sciences under the framework's 'communication' section? - Paul pointed us towards the Wellcome Trust website.

Paul responded to questions around balancing the economic and 'quality of life' impact metrics, the idea of establishing a quota of projects dedicated to 'blue sky' research, and the goal of producing an impact case study framework or template that's sufficiently broad to apply to all disciplines, and indeed across/within disciplines. It was also suggested that a forum to facilitate 'learning lessons' of unexpected/unwanted/negative research project outcomes may prove invaluable.

In terms of writing pathway to impact statements, Paul's tips include:
- being modest and focusing on what can be achieved and doing it well;
- acknowledging the potential for impact in ways which may or may not be realised.

Dominic closed the workshop, after which everyone was eager head to lunch.

Thanks to all those at ACES, the Centre for Sustainable International Development and Immpact for coordinating the day and facilitating lively debate.

It was really positive to see such a great turnout, particularly the support from senior members of University staff, attending the whole workshop: the university's commitment to impact is clear.

A quick reminder that the full collection of slides from the workshop can be downloaded here.

So, what did it all mean? What did I get out of the discussions?

Well, I left wondering...
-> is there a new/different role for public engagement officers, like myself, to play in the pathway to impact writing and review stages? e.g. c.f. The University of Bristol and UCL case studies here.
-> how can dot.rural further pursue knowledge transfer/exchange networks and opportunities?
-> can the University deliver the crucial capacity building and training programmes needed to support, identify and write high-quality pathway to impact statements? and how can dot.rural lead/support this?
-> is there one online central repository, capturing all available literature (e.g. the RCUK handbooks and the 'learning lessons' proposed forum) on impact and pathways to impact statements?
-> who would it be useful to see present case studies at future workshops in this new cross-college impact series?

Answers on a postcard*...

Claire

*or in fact in the blog comment section!

NCCPE Conference, London - Day 2

2011-01-20T14:37:00.031Z

OK, OK, a little later than expected... Here's the follow on to Day 1...

Tuesday 8th December 2010

Paul Gough (UWE) chaired the first plenary of day 2 on 'Public Engagement in Hard Times'. During this, we heard from David Sweeney (Research, Innovation and Skills, HEFCE) and Linda Quinn (the Big Lottery Fund).

David talked about 'uncertain times' and the continued commitment to the strategic plan... and admitted that we're "unlikely to see the repeat of initiatives such as the Beacons because of fundamental changes to the funding landscape".

He went on to propose that institutions should be given the flexibility to use core funds as they wish (e.g. for public engagement) and provide support staff to assist research staff when writing 'Pathways to Impact' statements, together.

Linda described the "Big Society" through empowerment, engagement and localism. She raised the possibility for organisations - including universities! - to apply for lottery funding for specific projects. Linda's other points included asking how the community can identify and encourage partnerships between the voluntary sector and HEIs and that "in bad times, the lottery continues to grow".

For the parallel sessions, I opted for:
(1) 'Embedding Public Engagement in Higher Education - Issues and Actions' hosted by Danny Burns from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University.

In groups, we worked through the 'draft conclusions and recommendations of the National Actions Research programme' document. We discussed the content, presentation and the terminology, before feeding back to the larger group.

A few key issues were identified here, including:
- The role of Heads of Department (or indeed of Schools/Colleges), equity and payment.
- Space and place, e.g. physical infrastructure and accessibility considerations... What would buildings look like if they were built for public engagement? How can we meet expectations? We may be engaging with schools but many school buildings are of higher quality than those of universities!
- Good public engagement needs to be responsive i.e. the current systems are designed for high volumes of research and teaching.
- Recognition and incentives to change e.g. within promotion criteria.
- Organisation and management of public engagement i.e. its needs to be planned and organised at a group level.

I was really chuffed to see 7.(e) incorporated: "We make some big assumptions because we are functioning in a web-based world. Some publics not accessible through that means. Greater use can be made of local notice-boards, the local paper and so on."

Some of the other comments and queries related to issues of: language, terminology used; definitions, boundaries and disciplines set; illustrations, videos and supplementary materials potentially being useful; making the document 'future proof'.

The full report can be accessed here.

(2) Taster session on 'Using Segmentation Tools for Public Engagement Benefit' hosted by Clive Barnet from the Open University.

Clive explained how there's considerable literature on why people don't opt to use market segmentation tools in public engagement.

He identified three fields in which such tools may be applied:
(i) Public sector (DEFRA, DFID etc) - segmenting to change people's attitudes, to change people's behaviour. [Technographic, participatory segmentation]
(ii) The Arts, broadcasting, media and cultural sectors - market segmentation in areas where its all about audience engagement, the audience/visitor.
(iii) Campaigning, the WWF, etc - where the market is values-based.

From this, Clive went on to identify four issues, or 'tensions', for HEIs.
- How public(s) are conceptualised; found or made? Qualitative methodologies to shape or find these public(s)?
- The continuum of different levels of engagement.
- Using segmentation in a discriminatory way; in a more inclusive way for diversity through specific targeting.
- The ethical and reputational issues regarding the use of marketing tools.

(3) 'Public Engagement as a Pathway to Impact Round Table' hosted by Ruth Potter from RCUK.

Although I knew little about what to expect, from a personal and dot.rural perspective, this session turned out to be the most useful and interesting of the two-day conference.

Referring back to the 'what's in it for me?' RCUK publication for researchers (see the Day 1 blog) Ruth presented her top tips for writing 'Pathways to Impact' statements... and to getting projects funded:
- consider and include project specific costs.
- think about how to maximise the benefits.
- focus on two-way engagement.

You can download a copy of Ruth's slides on 'Public Engagement with Research as a Pathway to Impact' here.

We then heard from Phillipa Bayley and Steve Cross on some of the exciting work being done at the University of Bristol and UCL, respectively, to support researchers in writing high-quality impact statements.

A few points from Phillipa's case-study...
* Considerations when writing statements
- Who/what might be impacted? e.g. people, knowledge, the economy, society.
- Think creatively about forms of engagement.
- Focus on two-way engagement.
- When doing public engagement, always talk about 'impact'.
- Link into existing networks.
- Build in strategies to form longer-term partnerships with communities and organisations.
- Always give detailed costings.
* Putting institutional support in place
- Establish an impact working group.
- Run faculty-based impact workshops.
- Provide support for individual academics.
- Supplement these with online resources.

You can download a copy of Phillipa's slides on 'Impact at the University of Bristol' here.

And similarly, some from Steve...
* Further considerations when writing impact statements
- Ensure the statement includes a willingness to pursue a variety of interests and opportunities, both public and press related.
- Identify the specific communities and/or areas aiming to reach or engage with.
- Specify a few things (i.e. events or activities) which can definitely be delivered.
- ...And add in a few potential others which may happen, depending on availability of resources and the unpredictability of the research findings, for example.

Both Phillipa and Steve explained how they regularly review impact statements - from a public engagement perspective - before submission to the research councils.

Some great models for dot.rural and the University of Aberdeen to adopt perhaps?

During the workshop, we also heard about the dangerous confusion or mis-use of 'dissemination' and 'two-way dialogue', along with a call for the language and message of impact to be standardised across research councils.

The output of the 'Pathways to Impact' session can be downloaded here.

The final plenary of the day, and of the conference, entitled 'Public Engagement: What Might the Future Hold?', was chaired by Paul Manners (Director, NCCPE) and presented by Gisele Yasmeen (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) and Sir David Watson (University of Oxford).

Gisele's presentation was particularly exciting - urging us to reflect on the three 'types of communicators' in attendance. It seems they are, the communicators: who view "engagement as a contact sport"; falling under the PR and communications umbrella; known as the 'techno crowd' (focusing on IT, open access and open data).

Finally, David had the non-trivial task of broaching 'what the future holds...'. Of course, he couldn't avoid mentioning HEIs and the credit crunch. He went on to spin this as yielding "forks in the road"! David considers such forks to include:
1. student choices
2. public investment - emphasising the need for HEIs to be ready when the government returns to a state of investment...
3. business/industrial investment - providing incentives for investment and the requirement on universities to be more/less business-like...
4. more/less autonomy - the issue of governance, reiterating that there are going to be no more special initiatives...
5. more/less government interference
6. the 'for profit' sector - the need for fostering more partnerships
7. competition for staff - the possibility of a brain-drain...
8. 'world classness'
9. indigenous/transnational development
10. closing down or opening up? What will happen to the sector as a whole?

So, I hope that provides an overview of the first (of many!) NCCPE two-day conference, in which I lost count of the number of times 'toolkits', 'public(s)', 'impact'... and, of course, 'Brian Cox' were mentioned! :-)

See you next year!
Claire

ACES participatory training

2011-01-14T14:28:00.004Z

Yesterday, Mukta, Peter and I were at an ACES (Aberdeen Centre for Environmental Sustainability) training session on participatory research. For the uninitiated, that means involving "stakeholders" (think we all agreed that's a horrible word) in your research as much as possible and from as early as possible so that they contribute to the outcomes - so highly relevant to all dot.rural projects and activities.

We covered loads of ground: stakeholder analysis, the carousel method, multi-criteria evaluation, grounded theory, semi-structured interviews - some I'd never heard of but all of which I'll use or at least consider using in my PhD work, not necessarily in the ways I'd anticipated. For example, grounded theory can be applied to literature reviews, multi-criteria evaluation to personal decisions and the carousel method to any kind of meeting format (an effective alternative to breakout groups/reporting back), so it's worth attending even if you're not directly engaging with participants. And most of the techniques can be used in pretty much any environment, from hi-tech computer labs to the Kalihari Desert.

In the afternoon we devoted quite a bit of time to interviews, covering consent, trust, legitimacy, body language, cultural sensitivities and the wisdom of wearing v-necks and nose-rings.

Mark Reed (facilitator) used a participatory format for the session so there was a lot of flexibility in the topics covered, we practised some methods in the course of the discussion, and we had plenty of input from fellow participants.

I came away wanting to learn much, much more. Go if you get the chance!

NCCPE Conference, London - Day 1

2010-12-16T12:36:00.030Z

Tuesday 7th December 2010

Day 1 of the National Coordinating Centre of Public Engagement (NCCPE) conference (held right next to Westminster Abbey!) was chaired by Prof Kathy Sykes.

The NCCPE in Bristol was established in 2008 as part of the £9.2m Beacons for Public Engagement initiative.

Kathy began by introducing the 'NCCPE Manifesto for Public Engagement' (launched on the day!).

Its an invaluable call, urging every university and research institute in the UK to commit to public engagement, stating:

We believe that universities and research institutes have a major responsibility to contribute to society through their public engagement, and that they have much to gain in return.

We are committed to sharing our knowledge, resources and skills with the public, and to listening to and learning from the expertise and insight of the different communities with which we engage.

We are committed to developing our approach to managing, supporting and delivering public engagement for the benefit of staff, students and the public, and to sharing what we learn about effective practice.

The full 'Manifesto for Public Engagement' booklet can be downloaded here covering topics such as:
- the impact of public engagement on your university, students and staff, civil society.
- what your university can do: developing a strategic approach to public engagement.

Also launched later that day was the NCCPE Concordat for engaging the public with research.

The timely launch of the Manifesto and Concordat provided a great backdrop for the two-day conference.

After a quick 'hands up' it seemed the 300-strong delegate list included: researchers; senior university managers; charities; university support staff; managers and policymakers from outside of the UK; those that would describe themselves as 'catalysts'; and community groups (surprising to see at any 'conventional' public engagement/science communication conference and very refreshing!).

In the first plenary ('The Case for Public Engagement') we heard from Prof Alan Thorpe (Chair, Research Councils UK) on the RCUK 'vision' of public engagement:
- for society to value and have confidence in research.
- to inspire young people to pursue research careers e.g. The Researchers in Residence scheme.
- to increase the societal impact of research.

Alan pointed us towards the 'what's in it for me?' RCUK publication for researchers and touched on the 'pathways to impact' statement ("a visible commitment that every researcher has to consider").

Terry Ryall (CEO for v, the National Young Volunteers Service) followed with an inspirational talk around the role of community groups, young people and youth workers.

The plenary closed with a Q&A session, encompassing:
- how can RCUK work with the media to ensure the correct narrative? The need to move towards a two-way dialogue and working with major media outlets.
- the training of HE students, volunteering and credit with the need to acknowledge the impact of teaching and learning as well.
- representatives from the Swedish Research Council being surprised at "how open the RCUK is to letting the public inform decisions and frame the research design".

Parallel sessions took over from here and I opted to attend:
(1) 'Issues and Challenges in Co-Inquiry Research' hosted by Prof Sarah Banks, representing the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action (at Durham University) and also the University of Newcastle.

Dr Audley Genus presented his work with a housing co-op which included a series of workshops to research the community's energy needs and suppliers. Audley emphasised the "importance of building networks and sustaining them". He moved on to denounce the idea of 'selecting participants' via a rational sample with a successful community-University collaborative project being more dependent on "those who want to work with you and who you can work with".

Audley's top tips for researchers were:
- tune into what participants want.
- manage expectations.
- bring experts on board, bringing people together.
- deliver on your promises.
- write notes up quickly.
- get outcomes communicated clearly and quickly.
- try your best to build confidence about you.

Finally, Audley surmised that the "nature of co-inquiry means you have to be able to live with the idea that sometimes a project won't work in one, particular way".

During the co-inquiry (meaning co-operative experiential inquiry) session it was great to see community representation in the form of Maurice Clarkson from community group 'Thrive!'. We heard about Thrive!'s collaboration with the University of Durham on a project where medical students do placements in the community, experiencing the problems being faced, such as isolation and deprivation, first-hand. Maurice also mentioned the BBC documentary and their feature on YouTube which resulted from such projects, with Thrive! acting as a "brokerage firm between the University and the people they wanted to research".

The session also included discussion from Robert Moss and Dr Andrew Russell.

The Q&A that followed discussed the following:
- the practical ethical challenges associated with university-community collaboration, e.g. the sharing of power and leadership roles, respecting different expertise, confidentiality, acknowledgement of contributions, dissemination of outcomes, and issues surrounding university research ethics policies.
- the Participatory Network for Change (PNFC) conference is taking place on the 13th January 2011. For more information and to register (£10 attendance fee) you should contact Penny Vincent.
- the differences experienced across disciplines.
- "doing research with people rather than on people".
- where do you put your (limited) resources; capturing, evaluating and measuring the social impact or 'just getting on with it'?

Final thought: "if it doesn't make a difference in your lives/community, why bother?"

Overall, an inspirational session!

(2) 'Taster Session - Engaging the Social Sciences' co-hosted by Melanie Knetsch from RCUK Office in India and Clare Wilkinson from UWE.

The (varied) definitions of 'public(s)' and 'public engagement' came up, along with need for the 'public' and physical scientists to really grasp what social science is. Also on the menu: concerns about over-engagement, the 'general public' as some mythical construct, 'users' as non-academics, and an 'audience' with connotations of one-way, stunted dissemination.

Melanie pointed us towards the ESRC's 'social science for schools' website. It turns out Melanie had met dot.rural's Technical Director at a recent workshop in India. Small world.

After lunch, I plumped for the parallel session on:
(3) 'What does it take to do engagement well?', delivered by CUEeast at the University of East Anglia, and Lara Isbel from the Edinburgh Beltane.

This kicked off with a screening of a short film by two researchers who took to the streets of Norwich, armed with a video camera and a microphone, asking two very simple questions: What is research? Who is it for?

The main findings are summarised here:
- Need - the need should drive research (not the other way around) and the research must be targeted.
- Accessibility - its difficult for members of the 'public' to find research online, often only being able to access an abstract before needing to pay a subscription fee for the full article.
- Education - facts are important, c.f. journalism.
- Public Awareness - the researchers have a responsibility to understand more about concerns/needs of the public, especially regarding issues such as quality of life, health etc.
- Responsibility - its everyone's responsibility to engage in this two-way dialogue.
- Other - the most useful conversations were actually conducted off-camera.

The interactive, quick-fire Q&A exercise on perceptions and attitudes around public engagement (if you fled with the 'buzzer' you know who you are!) followed, with the aim of highlighting the subjectivity of perceptions. Any big surprises?...
- 3% of us in the room said they consider the primary purpose of public engagement to be to 'generate income and be 'accountable''.
- The percentage split between public engagement having to be 'paid' or 'voluntary' was pretty much 50-50. Would payment be an incentive for researchers? Should it be written into a researcher's job description? What is meant by 'payment' (financial/temporal/credits)?...
- The communication support most needed was thought to be related to identifying social, ethical and political issues and using technology and digital media.
- Regarding 'reflection', almost 70% of us present felt that we'd need more support with understanding/evidencing the impact of our work.
- The diversity and complexity of engagement activities, increasingly conducted across disciplines, means the skill-set required is no longer related to the type of engagement activity, but is much broader.

CUEeast gave us some tips on recognition and training...
- institutions should consider distributing awards for involvement in public engagement activities at, for example, graduation ceremonies.
- training at institutions should define clear learning outcomes, exploit links with professional career paths, and include reference to: film-making; presenting at Cafe Scientifiques; delivering professional demonstrations; understanding your audience; and empathy.

Lara presented the Edinburgh Beltane online training depository with the training agenda centred around the three key areas of communication, project management and public engagement pathways. For more info on this, see the interim review (p17) here.

Lara went on to emphasise:
- the inclusive approach adopted there with a philosophy to involve everyone at the institution (support staff, administrators, management, researchers, students...).
- the importance of sharing courses between institutions and the 'Beltane Bursary' where two places are reserved on any one course for those not affiliated with the host university.

Paul Manners (Director, NCCPE) chaired the final plenary of the day, entitled 'A President's Reflection on the Role of Engagement in Universities' with Dame Prof Nancy Rothwell (President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Manchester and Principal Investigator, Manchester Beacon).

Paul took the opportunity to announce the relaunched website which includes a section bringing together some of the evidence for the benefits of engagement to research and teaching.

He also reported on how researchers can be supported to develop their skills in engagement.

So I've rambled...

After grabbing a quick bite, we all piled onboard the Tattershall Castle for Bright Club. I really enjoyed listening to the Neuroscientist but there were (certain) parts that induced flashbacks of holidaying at Butlins in the '80s. Bizarre!

I was left wondering what day 2 would have in store...

Claire

Gorry & Claire in London: Satellites, Public Engagement and Buses!

2010-12-16T09:26:00.010Z

Monday 6th December 2010

So ahead of my National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) conference and Gorry's week of meetings in London, we took the opportunity to touch base with Avanti and, just around the corner, Inmarsat.

First stop Inmarsat...

We met up with Paul Febvre to discuss dot.rural-Inmarsat collaboration in the future and potential involvement with the DigiBus (coming soon!). The agenda also included the National Science and Engineering Week free, satellite-themed public event we're planning for 17th March 2011 at 7 pm - put in your diary! We're inviting satellite manufacturers, internet service providers, space agencies and more!

Next we hurried round the corner to Avanti to catch-up with Trevor Barker (guest speaker at Arjuna's NGA workshop at Digital Futures 2010) and Graham Peters...

We're working with Avanti on the part TSB-funded Digital Advanced Rural Testbed (DART) project so met up to kick things off.

In case you missed the spectacular satellite launch - making the DART project possible - you can watch it here.

It was great to meet with Paul, Trevor and Graham on our whistle-stop tour. Next stop, the NCCPE conference...

Bye for now!
Claire

Profile: Nico Rotstein

2010-11-19T14:35:00.001Z

Name: Nicolás Daniel Rotstein

Start date: 22/02/10

Project/area: I'm currently working for FITS and starting soon with ASSURE

Favourite biscuit? Argentinian ones: alfajores Havanna, although a couple of my officemates expressed their opinion about me liking anything edible on anybody's desk

Favourite place? for whom to do what? Geographical place… mmm… away from urbanity, not cold, in a tent

Favourite word? In Spanish: "excelso"; in English: "whatsoever"

Twitter? Facebook? Other? Facebook and face-to-face

iPhone? Blackberry? Other? iPhone

What can you not live without? random conversation (which is different from chitchat)

Which character from film, television or literature most resembles you? The Godfather, I've been told - but I think they were referring to the actor

If you weren't working at dot.rural, what would you be doing? trying to start a career writing fiction

Use ten words to describe a dot.rural colleague (without naming names): that rules "ruthless" out - affable, amiable, congenial, cordial, demonstrative, convivial, companionable, sociable, gregarious, outgoing

Is there anything we don't already know about you? yes

Digital Futures 2010 - Day 3

2010-10-18T12:41:00.043+01:00

The final day of the conference was comprised of two workshop sessions, morning and afternoon.

The first was Arjuna's - Enabling Universal Service Provision using Next Generation Access (NGA) Technologies. Unsurprisingly, the key to customer satisfaction when providing internet access is speed, reliability and cost.

We heard from Cybermoor, an organisation which provides internet access for the 'final third', going the last mile (download slides here). So what next? What follows Cybermoor?... Fibremoor of course!

If you're wanting to check out speeds in your area, have a look at Sam Knows.

Trevor Barker of Avanti delivered the second talk of the session (download slides here). We heard about HYLAS I (a satellite providing coverage for western Europe in 2010) and HYLAS II (Middle East and Africa, 2012). Trevor was understandably a little nervous - his satellite was just days from lift off... or disaster!

Avanti's portfolio includes: the Scottish Government's broadband reach project, getting more than 2000 customers online in the Highland and Islands; the department of Trade, Enterprise and Investment's rural broadband initiative in Northern Island; service provision in city-centre locations such as Birmingham; wind farm data analysis and dam monitoring.

So we know the delivery of broadband in rural areas is driven by population density, but what about the 'final third'? Maybe satellite technology can help...

The Hercules next generation satellite promises ~50 Mbps for ~700,000 customers meanwhile NXY will deliver a pilot service of iPlayer (with support from the BBC). The NXY pilot, to be rolled out to 100 homes in the UK, will be based on caching content on a hard drive, to be accessed (on demand) locally.

Its clear that satellite technology is not competing with the terrestrial, but rather complementing it.

It was interesting to hear from John Seton (BT Research and Development) and their ambitious plans: allocating £2.5 bn to roll out fibre to the first two-thirds of the UK by 2015; and the 'race to infinity' (a demand registration scheme, building a map of demand, with a competitive edge!).

John went on to talk about the BT project with Cornwall Council - NGA for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. The plan? For up to 90% of homes and businesses in the area to get fibre access by 2014, building on the previous actnow campaign.

OK, OK, so its technically possible to deliver NGA to everyone, including the final third but what John really wants to know is what's everyone doing with it?! What do you really want to be able to do with high-speed broadband? Answers on a postcard...

John concluded by summarising BT's rural broadband research partnerships, to build a community of people, share information and best practice:
- the Wales research hub/rural observatory (coming soon!)
- Cornwall, Plymouth University and UC Falmouth
- Bute (a different way of serving 'not spots')
- and dot.rural!

Fresh from catching up with the Rural Broadband Conference in Penrith, dot.rural's Gorry Fairhurst led the fourth presentation (download slides here). Click here to watch Gorry's talk.

Jonathon Ishmael from Lancaster University brought the morning session to a close, introducing us to the 'Wray Living Lab' (download slides here).

The Wray broadband project built a live network testbed, leading to research into wireless mesh and social impact. Jonathon talked about the essential information required to maintain the network, user contention and security concerns.

My 'Engaging the Public with the Digital Economy' workshop followed after lunch with a great line up.

I kicked off with the introduction (download slides here) and then Chloe Sheppard discussed funding opportunities and the benefits of public engagement to the research community. If you're a researcher and you don't already know about the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE), the Fresh Science initiative, and the RCUK guides and toolkits... you should do!

Paul Rosen (download slides here) and Cathy Brown (download slides here) then delivered talks on the Researchers in Residence and STEM Ambassadors schemes, respectively. Remember, the two schemes are not mutually exclusive!

It was a pity the number of workshop participants was down on the registered figure - probably due to the unfortunate scheduling. Nevertheless, interesting points were raised and engaging discussions had by all.

Does the UK academia place too much emphasis on public engagement in the context of schools? What about other community partnerships?

Mark Dyball from People Science and Policy gave an overview of evaluation, highlighted the distinction between evaluation and monitoring and emphasised the value in planning evaluation as with any other exercise (download slides here).

Geoff Parsons from the British Science Association made it just in time (straight from a schools talk) to talk about 'the three principles' - engagement, translation and credibility.

Another Q&A session followed before I announced - da, da, da! - the 'final challenge'!

The final challenge: To participate (plan/deliver) in a public engagement activity (public, schools, research users etc) before January 2011 and share experiences – good and bad – online via the dot.rural blog. We look forward to reading the entries!

So what's the overall verdict on the conference? Digital Futures provides a great platform for the Digital Economy (DE) Hubs, DE Doctoral Training Centres and industry to get together, network and share knowledge. I think DE students and research staff would benefit from bursaries enabling more to attend.

It seemed dot.rural and the challenges of rural communities was a little under-represented during the three days and, rather disappointingly, the content didn't appear to be balanced across the three subject areas: Computing Science, Communications Engineering and Social Science.

Remember, dot.rural were tweeting throughout - you can follow us and catch-up with all our tweets here.

On the final night, before flying back to Aberdeen, the fire alarm rang out and our hotel was evacuated at 4 am! Dazed and confused we froze outside for an hour until... crew from the three fire engines confirmed there was in fact no fire(!)

Don't forget, the full programme from Digital Futures 2010 can be found here.

Finally, thanks to all those involved in making the workshops a success and thanks to the Horizon organising team!

We look forward to SiDE hosting it next year and hope to hear about more projects with real transformative potential.

See you next year!
Claire

Digital Futures 2010 - Day 2

2010-10-17T16:35:00.043+01:00

Microsoft's Andrew Herbert keynote launched day 2: 'New Technologies for the Digital Economy' on telemedicine, directing treatments to individuals (by mathematical proofs), e-science outputs, virtual worlds, ageing populations and Bayesian inference. Let's just hope Andrew didn't stick around to hear another presenter rant I hate Windows during her talk later that day...

The first session of the morning, entitled 'Digital Experimentation (In the Wild)', started with a team from Glasgow University on 'Mass Participation in User Trials'. Two mobile applications were presented: the World Cup Predictor and Hungry Yoshi. I just can't help thinking, are these really solutions to the pressing challenges that the Digital Economy was conceived to solve?...

SiDE Ph.D .student Kyle Montague talked about ‘Adaptive Design’, treating users as individuals and the IndoorNav project. He went on to point out that adaptive systems, like Amazon ‘remembering’ what you bought and recommending future purchases, actually have skewed models of who we are… since Amazon is completely unaware of his passion for BBQs!!

The session concluded with Adam Moore from Horizon talking about ‘Positioning in the Wild – Illustrating Emerging Issues’, augmented reality, navigate [the information space] by navigation, narrating the past and present by overlaying photos and annotations on mobile applications. The example shown centred around the now non-existent pub, ‘Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem’ – a great starting point for any research project!

This talk raised lots of questions for the geographers in the house, including: How do you define ‘place’?... Should we be adopting this kind of approach – real-time images, GPS, annotations, historical facts, and narratives – within the Enterprise & Culture or Natural Resource Conservation projects?

The morning session that followed, ‘Emergent Ideas’, took the quick fire format – ensuring the talks were snappy and engaging.

George Kuk presented the ‘Innovator’s Dilemma: Digital Inclusion vs. Innovation’ and ubiquitous computing, asking is such IT and Internet access a ‘right’. George also discussed codified knowledge – computer vs. information literacy – and posing social complementarity (i.e. reaching out to user communities) as the only solution.

Another topic with strong links to our Enterprise & Culture projects came from Ann Light, presenting ‘Fairtracing.org and Ethical Marketing 2.0’. The talk focused on consumer interfaces and ethical information and the effort to make the provenance of goods more visible to all parties involved in the transaction, e.g. throughout the production, shipment and trade of, say, Indian coffee. Some key challenges arose during the project, including issues surrounding ethical credentials (which party gets what?), political sensitivity… and the question of the responsibility of researchers.

Paul Egglestone and Jon Rogers presented the next, rather refreshing, quick fire talk: ‘Bespoke: Increasing Social Inclusion through Community Journalism and Bespoke Design’. The title pretty much says it all! The Bespoke project puts the ‘grass roots’ approach into practice, asking the community directly about the types of products or services they would like. Paul and Jon achieve this, not by traditional methods such as surveys or questionnaires, but through the medium of journalism and community news as insight tools.

The Bespoke project trained up and commissioned community reporters, for the estate, from the estate itself. After distributing their stories in community newspapers and identifying themes, physical outputs were built. This culminated in the creation and deployment of ‘digital buskers’. Is there any scope for a Bespoke-type tool when engaging with, and conducting research in, rural communities?

A series of transport-related quick fire talks followed – are you listening Accessibility & Mobilities?... (Disappoint for John N though, no mention of taxis!).

SiDE reviewed their work on ‘Digital Transport: Using DE Systems to monitor and assess the technical and driving performance of electric vehicles’. Their research included identifying the related issues (power consumption/regeneration, driving performance, road topology, weather conditions etc). The end goal of mapping the perceived vs. projected range (e.g. how far can an electric vehicle travel along a particular trajectory) then considered all of these measurements and challenges... with surprising results! What was even more surprising was that after a day and half, this was the first mention of ‘rural communities’!!

Nikolay Mehandjiev’s talk on ‘Balancing Commuter Traffic with Agents’ continued the transport theme, introducing agents as transport segments (roads, trains, buses) and multi-modal routing. The agents regulate the segment load at peak times, negotiate with other, personal agents (e.g. journey planners) and enable ‘bidding’. The model is based around eco-credits, distributed as an incentive and able to be cashed in, for a tax return. Related issues of privacy and security need still to be addressed, while establishing the cognitive and social factors impacting multi-modal commuting is also outstanding.

It seems there’s considerable overlap between this research and, our: agents technology platform; our Accessibility & Mobilities projects; and the potential for developing associated business models and forging commercial partnerships with Royal Mail, local councils etc (i.e. our Enterprise & Culture projects).

Members of the Horizon DE Hub presented their talk on ‘User and organisational needs for ad-hoc car sharing’ and the socially connected journey, illustrated by two applications – car sharing and taxi sharing. Their findings include: the context of car/taxi sharing is important (another anecdote featuring line dancing!); car/taxi sharing is more found to be acceptable when occasional; time information is more important in the decision-making process than route information; the timing of setting up the car/taxi sharing is important; users are prepared to share their data; cost savings or incentives are well received. In terms of user interfaces and the delivery of information, it was reported that simple text messages were more valued, as opposed to complex geographical representations. So, what was their overall message? Technology can help, but within a social context.

Iain Buchan’s talk on ‘NHS e-Labs: Engineering Digital Health Economies’ doubled the number of ‘rural community’ mentions! I saw obvious synergies with our Healthcare projects and the topics Iain covered - chronic diseases, co-morbidities, the ‘what if’ policy simulator for planning and impact assessment, personalised and local healthcare.

The group from Cranfield University presented ‘Energy Harvesting MEMS: A promising alternative to power the digital economy’ and their potential use in sensor systems, the Healthcare sector and environmental monitoring. Maybe I was missing something pretty key but piezoelectric (quartz etc) and thermoelectric materials have been around for years... So I was left wondering what exactly was novel here? Meanwhile, Arjuna was left wondering if its possible to wirelessly 'share' energy between networks of MEMS? (Take a look here at one potential application, completely independent of the discussions which took place during Digital Futures.

The morning session came to a close and, rather frustratingly, I'd only just discovered the delegate list here. Hmmm... Surely an essential feature of any conference pack?

I managed a tad more networking over lunch which included an interesting discussion with a new SiDE student. Could the hosts of other Digital Futures work 'breakout sessions' into their programme? Even informal groups where, say, students are scheduled to gather for ~30 minutes for a short introduction could prove helpful.

dot.rural’s Director, John Farrington, chaired the first session after lunch, entitled ‘Digital Inclusion’. First up was Paul Watson on social inclusion in the digital economy, building up a pool of over 3000 users, highlighting strong links with our Healthcare project on chronic disease management and exclaiming we can't just solve this with a technology push. ‘Rural communities’ also got another mention, but hey, who’s counting?! At the end of his talk, I left wanting to know more about Culture Lab...

Lorna Gibson opened her talk on ‘Facilitating Appropriate Access to Consumer Healthcare Information’ with this stat: 68% of people in the UK have searched for health information online. Uh-oh...

The last talk of the session was Leela Damodaran’s on the subject of ‘Sustaining Digital Engagement: Some Emerging Issues’ and the Sus-IT project. Leela introduced the idea of a ‘virtual grandchild’ – a type of real-time, on demand reference ‘tool’ or person to assist older people with IT challenges... Great idea but where does it end? Would we need a ‘virtual great-grandchild’ to explain how to use the ‘virtual grandchild’ and so on... ‘The project is designed to prolong the independence of older people through IT use... of particular relevance for our Healthcare theme?

After the break, Edoardo Pignotti’s talk on ‘a provenance fabric’ included discussion on the security of data provenance and the need for an architecture to describe and uniquely identify artefacts, processes, organisations, people and social networks and to define relationships between these.

Martin Flintham from Horizon and the Mixed Reality Lab led the penultimate talk, on ubiquitous technologies, the power of crowd sourcing and the context of outside (i.e. not in a conventional TV studio) broadcasting where ‘we’ become the directors/editors). One example given was a Radiohead gig in 2009 where the audience filmed, edited and published the performance (crowd sourcing, citizen journalism and outside broadcasting in action). Some research examples given were based on the ideas of the viewer directing their own experience, mobile video-streaming platforms and marathons as ‘many spectators, many participants’ scenarios.

Chris Greenhalgh’s talk, ‘Towards a Platform for Urban Games’, lobby services on mobile devices and ‘exploding places’ concluded day 2.

Before dinner at Fothergills...

we had a rare few minutes to explore Nottingham's delights - well, the castle.

OK, the Robin Hood statue as well...

Day 3 is on its way...

Claire

Digital Futures 2010 - Day 1

2010-10-16T08:29:00.000+01:00

On Sunday October 10th, a few dot.rural's travelled down to the Horizon Digital Economy Hub in Nottingham. Profs John F and Tim, Dr Arjuna, and Chris B were all attending the first Digital Futures annual conference at the Crowne Plaza Hotel (whilst dot.rural's Hien was representing us at Innovate 10, London).

Note to self: Never stay in the 'Nottingham Central Travelodge' again.

Day 1 kicked off with an intro from John Hand (RCUK, Digital Economy Programme) asking us to note who is not here that should be? I looked around but couldn't see any users...

The keynote on 'Living with a Contextual Footprint' and delivered by Tom Rodden followed. Whilst Tom talked about privacy and permanency, I considered the irony of blogging about it later.

The morning session on 'Digital Identity and Storage' included talks from Richard Mortier on a decentralised future, 'the cloud', 'the mist' and 'droplets'!

This was followed by Wendy Moncur on 'Digital Inheritance' - an unavoidably morbid topic, however its presented. Wendy's talk threw up a few surprises; there's a very real possibility that anyone of us will be baptised a Mormon after death, irrespective of our personal beliefs during life.

The final talk of the morning came from Derek McAuley on 'all our data in one place', data mining, business models, trust and ownership.

We paused for lunch (four desserts for Arjuna!) before reconvening for the 'Digital Interaction and Experience' afternoon session.

Gabriella Giannchi discussed the 'case of Rider Spoke', mixed media experiences and documents and archives to help connect communities. The idea of mashups and annotating and tagging digital media to enhance experiences... Are there any links with our Enterprise & Culture and/or Natural Resource Conservation projects, e.g. wrt to tourism?

'Automics' was introduced by Steve Benford as automated comics, going on to present theme parks as a complex photo ecology. I was looking forward to this but was left wondering about the scope of such photo, experience-based and semi-personalised souvenirs. Would I buy one at the end of a day at Alton Towers? No, probably not.

I was thankful for the exciting talk on 'Collaborative Cross-Modal Interfaces' from the team Queen Mary which pepped up the afternoon. Nick, Tony and Oussama introduced auditory diagrams; a tool to make diagrams more accessible to those with no/partial vision (whether depicting management structures in companies, files and folders on computers, technical schematics or financial plots). Ever wondered what an arrow 'sounds' like? This seemed to be one real example of (potentially) changing peoples lives using technology.

Ella Taylor-Smith's talk on 'Web 2.0 for Collaborative Production', e-government, e-participation, inclusion, connecting institutes of 'local power' in the Big Society and stronger social networks... This one prompted lots of discussion from the floor: is there a tension between inclusion and innovation? Is e-participation techno deterministic? How can we get people to act altruistically? Paul Kindred from the Welsh Assembly asked: There's a positive UK (mostly England & Scotland) inclusion agenda right now (Martha Lane Fox etc) but what about Wales?

I'd never heard of the Good Gym before. Its a brilliant initiative where Londoners do good deeds whilst out running, like delivering library books to elderly or house-bound residents en route. Its probably the one thing, if nothing else, I'll take away from Digital Futures. Thanks Ella!... Is there anyway of adapting this model and applying it to solve challenges in rural areas?

A quick break, a little bit of networking and a lot of coffee and cookies later... The 'Digital Communities' section began (chaired by dot.rural's Tim Norman).

It was great to hear from Lorna Gibson on the Seeds For Design project and the digitally disengaged. Currently the project is centred around Leeds, Dundee and Kent. Are there any plans to extend this study to rural areas?

The next talk of the session was by Ruth Rettie on 'CHARM: The Social Norm Approach to Sustainable Behaviour Change'. The CHARM project is an example of using digital technologies to assist with behaviour change. Keep your eyes peeled for the associated iGreen Facebook app, to be launched soon!

Jon Whittle from Lancaster University presenting 'VoiceYourView: Mapping Public Confidence in Policing' concluded this session - undoubtedly the most engaging of all sessions over the two days.

VoiceYourView is a super initiative involving perception maps and natural language generation (links with dot.rural's MIME and Accessibility & Mobilities projects, as well as a technology platform?). VoiceYourView collects observations (such as 'how safe do you think your neighbourhood is?...) and overlays these on geographical maps, publishing them on public displays in real-time, with a view to improving society. Take a look at their paper here...

Does the combination of perceptions (or indeed facts) and maps pose any opportunities for dot.rural's Accessibility & Mobilities projects? Could real-time mapping of perceptions and actual data (e.g. on bus arrival times) assist the informed flexible passenger project?

Jon's presentation prompted questions such as: What if you simultaneously mapped perceptions and reality? Could publishing perceptions actually shape data, creating extreme scenarios in society? i.e. If you believe crime to be high in an area, could that belief, when made public, actually drive crime up beyond the true level?...

After a short break the evening poster session began. Two dot.rural members were selected to present their research: Arjuna Sathiaseelan on universal service provisioning using next generation access technologies;

and Chris Baillie on provenance in the web of linked sensor data.

With a long and jam-packed day almost behind us all that was left was the conference dinner: tomato soup with mozzarella; apricot stuffed chicken with vegetables/squash crumble; and lemon tart. Thanks to John F, I attempted to challenge Arjuna's 'four dessert record'. Unfortunately, my two helpings of lemon tart, white chocolate 'slice' and raspberry coulis just wasn't enough to claim victory.

A review of day 2 is on its way...

Claire

Carbon Responsible Transport Conference. Aberdeen 12/10/10

2010-10-14T11:42:00.002+01:00

I attended a conference for the European Interreg project CARE-North at Aberdeen City Council where speakers from Scotland and other northern European cities presented. The presentations in the morning were related to the Scottish context and discussed transport policy as well as business, cultural and social factors that influence transport strategies and modal choice. Professor Richard Laing discussed the importance of public engagement in transport strategy and outlined initial findings from a study which indicated that the public on the whole support initiatives to improve air quality in Aberdeen City. Philip Smart presented on the importance of engaging with the business community when trying to reduce pollution from freight vehicles. In the panel discussion there was some debate about how to overcome the issues of the politicisation of transport and a quite extensive (and polarisedl!) discussion about a suggestion that lorries be allowed to use dedicated bus lanes to prevent them becoming stuck in traffic. There was also discussion of how the economic downturn was affecting the development of carbon responsible transport strategies.

The afternoon presentations were from speakers from Leeds and some of the European partners. I particularly enjoyed the presentation from Michael Glotz Richter from Bremen about Low Emissions Zones (LEZs) and Car Clubs where he demonstrated that even though the LEZ was initially very controversial with the business community, it has been successful and has attracted widespread interest from around the world. Also, Steve Heckley from Leeds Metro highlighted the importance of developing robust (low cost) methodologies for monitoring carbon impacts which ties in with the work of the RGU team by Amar Nayak. In the final panel discussion a delegate who had worked in transport in Africa raised the point that high polluting vehicles from Europe were being exported to developing countries thus shifting the problem of emissions around rather than tackling the problem on a global scale. There were also discussions about the relative importance of developing electric and other 'clean' vehicles vs promoting modal shift to walking and cycling.

Although there was recognition of the tremendous challenges for local governments developing carbon responsible transport strategies the tone of the conference was very upbeat and I left feeling positive for the future development of low carbon transport initiatives in Europe.

Lizzy

EnvironmentYES: The Result!

2010-09-28T10:34:00.002+01:00

So the updates fell by the wayside a bit but there was good reason for it. Firstly, the Internet provided by our hotel was shockingly bad and it took the best part of Thursday afternoon to load our blog from Wednesday! Secondly, the competition was peaking and all our resources were ploughed into generating the best business plan that we could!

Our hypothetical business had some credited members who provided a well rounded team of entrepreneurs. Introducing PIP (People Inspired Power)...

Managing Director: Dr Anna Evely, having recently been a senior manager at Solar Central Ltd Anna is well placed to lead our business into the renewable energy sector, her natural ability to enthuse others makes her a driving force in the team.

Financial Director: Emily Lambert, with a strong background of financial representation and a personal interest in environmental issues, Emily has spent many a late night working streams of numbers into understandable business projections.

Science Director: Dr Laura Lehtovirta, a string of academic accolades make Laura highly equipped to deal with the technical logistics of the PIP strip, prepared for any question she will excite interest in this product like no other.

Marketing Director: Gina Maffey, coming from Hydro Electric Gina already knows the energy market well, her attention to detail may result in late finishes but PIP is now ingrained on many people's memories.

So with this fantastic team we ventured into the board room to face the investors. After a 5.30AM finish we were riding purely on adrenalin, however lack of sleep was never going to stop us. The standard of competition was high but we felt we delivered an exciting and high energy pitch, and left the investors asking for more... literally... they were genuinely interested in the idea and had a lot of questions. We left the room relieved, happy and ready to hit the bar. Which is exactly what we did.

After a two hour wait all the teams returned to the board room for the results to be delivered. We soon found out that the investors had chosen...

the Northern Irish group...

in all honesty we were a little sad, how could we not be after the intense few days we'd been through. However, all was not lost, we found that the University of Aberdeen BiotechYES group had won their round!! Congratulations guys!!

In retrospect what are our take home messages from this event:

Have Fun!! We managed to avoid arguing all week, despite the stressful nature of the project.
Application is key! Having to use skills we had only been taught minutes before increased our level of understanding at a phenomenal rate.
Keep it simple stupid! Keeping communication at a level that is understandable for a broad audience is key. If people want to know more they will ask questions!

Finally... PIP has the People, PIP has the Inspiration, PIP has the Power, all PIP needs now is YOU!

Gina, Anna, Emily and Laura

Day 2 at EnvironmentYES!

2010-09-23T14:33:00.001+01:00

Well today has been intense! After an educational taxi ride, where we were lectured on why the government is failing society today, we arrived at the conference centre. With 15mins to spare before we started, Emily and Gina managed to sweet talk the café manager to give us some biscuits having missed out on breakfast. We were all very grateful of these as from 9.30am till 1pm we were put through five packed lectures on aspects of finance, marketing, patenting and business plans. If you were following our tweets you’ll see that some of these were far more interesting than others!

Following lunch refreshed, refuelled and ready to go we headed to our individual conference rooms to begin outlining our business plan. Throughout the afternoon we were visited by four experts to help us develop our ideas. As the blog detailed yesterday we had been playing around with three concepts, and having slept on them we were all equally enthused by the energy transfer idea (Sorry Mark and Steve!), and had begun to explore this further doodling logos and the like throughout the morning.

The input from the experts has been invaluable this afternoon and as things drew to a close at 5.30pm we were reminded that at 6.30pm we had to give a 60sec elevator pitch to the rest of the groups. An elevator pitch is a hypothetical scenario where you are in a lift with an investor, and so have 60sec to concisely communicate your idea. Whilst sitting in the room waiting to hear the other groups speak we suddenly recalled that this pitch was also a competition, with a prize for the winning team! The tension increased!

Below is the transcript of our pitch that Gina delivered, hopefully you should understand our business idea from this, although please remember the technology is entirely our imagination, it is our business understanding that is being tested here!

As we are continually reminded energy resources are depleting, yet there is an untapped resource that continues to grow year on year, week by week and day by day… PEOPLE.
My name’s Gina and I am from ‘People Inspired Power’ or ‘PIP’. We have developed a new product that harnesses the power of footsteps. At its simplest the PIP STRIP is a pressure pad mat that converts kinetic energy into electricity.
Imagine a tube station where 10s of 1000s of commuters pass through ticket barriers everyday. Installing a PIP STRIP into this forced thoroughfare would generate enough electricity to not only power the station but to give electricity back to the grid as well.
PIP is safe, green, simple and cost effective.
Money may make the world go round but with PIP footsteps will drive it.

After all the groups had presented we had to vote for what we felt was the best pitch, although we were banned from voting for ourselves! HOWEVER, we managed to walk away with over 50% of the votes and an unquestionable win! Our winnings consisted of ‘The growing business handbook’ and a choice between book tokens or bubbly… naturally we took the wine. We have received a lot of praise from experts and teams alike, but have no fear this has not gone to our heads as we settle down to continue working and building on our early success.

With a late night ahead, and an early start tomorrow we’ll leave you now and look forward to hearing your feedback soon!

Gina, Anna, Emily and Laura

Day 1 at EnvironmentYES!

2010-09-21T19:38:00.004+01:00

Blogging from the EnvironmentYES competition in Edinburgh, a young entrepreneurs scheme aiming to increase the level of entrepreneurial awareness in the environmental science community.

Hi all,

So we have finally all made it to Edinburgh (Anna Evely and Emily Lambert all the way from London! Gina Maffey and Laura Lehtovirta from Aberdeen), and managed to find our apartment in preparation for tomorrow. We are currently camped out in true brain storming style... papers all over the floor, pizza delivery on call and wine chilling in the fridge!

Tomorrow on the agenda we have a morning of talks on various aspects of business and marketing, this is followed by an afternoon of exploring our current ideas with experts on tap. To give a brief outline of the competition, we are asked to market a real or hypothetical solution to an existing environmental problem. We are judged on our ability to market the product, not the product itself, although of course our knowledge of the problem has to stand up to some questioning! We have been asked to come with some ideas but nothing set in stone, so we would love to hear your thoughts on the following...

Vertical gardening - Similar to green roofs, utilising this commercial technology http://www.verticalfarm.com/ but marketing it on a domestic scale, and in a way that can be installed in existing buildings. This holds potential for small scale food production as well as bringing nature to communities and children that currently do not have access to outdoor spaces.
People powered energy plant - Harnessing the kinetic energy stored in each of us to effectively produce electricity. Applications include looking at games consoles, like the WII, to power the TV while it's in use, gym classes in schools to supply lighting in other classes and using the footfall of commuter traffic to light the underground (This last example has been piloted successfully in Tokyo station). This holds both small scale and industrial possibilities, along with running alongside health campaigns and energy bill reductions.
Flood warning technology - Using sensor systems that work on three levels. The first level sensor would be activated when water levels are moderately high and would alert the local meteorological station, the second level sensor would be activated if water levels continue to rise alerting local governments and councils that evacuation could be possible. Finally, the third level sensor would be activated when water levels are dangerously high to alert local communities that evacuation is imminent.

Right, we are off to watch another episode of Dragons Den, all in the name of team bonding and research!!

We will also be tweeting on @AberdeenCES this week and would love to hear from you!

Gina, Anna, Emily and Laura

TechFest Activity Weekend - technology museum pushes all the right buttons!

2010-09-21T09:47:00.009+01:00

Another One Bytes the Dust
9.00am - 4.30pm, Saturday 18th & Sunday 19th September 2010
Beach Ballroom, Aberdeen

Ever wondered what one of the world's first computers looked like and what it could do? Want to find out how mobile phones can shrink? Curious to discover the link between musical drums and a hole-punch?... Then you should have joined the ~3000-strong crowd of visitors at the Beach Ballroom last weekend to find out!

With a van load of kit, a team of dot.rural researchers (and TechFest-SetPoint's Techie the Terrier!) were on hand to answer all of these questions and more!

After an absolutely jam-packed, exhausting and fantastic weekend, two days of lunches consisting of corned beef sarnies (the glamour!) and the gradual loss of our voices... we made it!

dot.rural's technology museum workshop proved a roaring success. Early estimates from the TechFest organisers (TechFest-SetPoint) suggest ~3000 people - adults and children - raced through the doors of the Beach Ballroom over the Activity Weekend.

Special thanks go to:
Ruth - for crazy amounts of hard work before and during and, of course, your ridiculous dedication to getting the Spectrum up and running!
Nico - sorry for plunging you in at the deep end.. you didn't sink! I've not seen you since so hope you've managed to survive after your 'scare'!!!
Gorry - what a help! Firstly, representing the Co-Investigators (dot.rural's first Prof to engage with the public!), enabling Ruth's Pong to join in the workshop, and then with the crucial transportation! (Note to self: Never get in a car in Aberdeen with no windscreen wipers!!)
Lizzy - for expert researching on the 'history of computing' and the TV that wasn't to be.
Gina and Hien - for dragging themselves down to the Ballroom on a Sunday afternoon to show their support for dot.rural! Good effort guys :-)
Everyone at TechFest-SetPoint - Yvonne, Liz, Sam, Sean... for a super efficient, slick event and the chance to take part.
John Reid - for passing on just a smidgen of your unlimited knowledge and the generous loaning of exhibits (courtesy of the University's Natural Philosophy Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments)... and for your patience!

So many visitors (more than we could have imagined!) turned up to see the progress of everyday technologies through the ages. Although there was a team of us on hand to host the workshop, in hindsight our dot.rural human resource needed doubling to cope with the demand...

The 'retro arcade' (Pong, BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum and iMac G3) attracted both the young and the, err, not so young!

The 'punch programming' activity was a real hit with the littluns. Gimme a bit of paper and a hole punch and I can program 'Claire' in the Baudot code in about 3 seconds flat.

The 'computer biopsy' activity provided an opportunity for parents to show off their knowledge of the inner workings of computers and for kids to surprise me (well done to computer whizz Calum, aged ~8)... and their parents!

Keep your eyes peeled for photos of Gorry and random TechFest attendee (Jack) appearing in local media and the College Bulletin soon.

More of our amateur photos - of course, all with the subject's approval - are on their way...

Check out http://www.techfestsetpoint.org.uk/emag/2010_public_programme/ for more info on this and other events in the TechFest in September programme!

Bye for now... and see you next year!
Claire

Last News from Birmingham

2010-09-19T10:17:00.004+01:00

Hello world!!
Here at the British Science Festival we almost arrive at the end. In these last days there were a lot of interesting exhibitions and workshops. I'm going to give you just two little examples....
How happy are you in your life? Good news if your are around your 40s you will be happier than what you are at the moment, not really good news if you are around 20s-30s, things will get worse :( I hope I'll be an exception.
Dora, a robot that can discover the environment, was showed in an interesting event about how far we are from having robots that behave as humans.

This is all from Birmingham and it's already time for me to come back to Aberdeen. This festival is very interesting and exciting, it's an opportunity for discovering the new wonders of science and for meeting nice people. If you want to have a look to the news and some more information look here NEWS. And if you want some material from the festival just let me know!!
Goodbye from Birmingham!!
Ciao
Alice

British Science Festival: DAY 3

2010-09-16T22:07:00.002+01:00

Have you ever thought about how to define NOTHING? Can you imagine it? The number zero, an empty space, a vacuum cleaner..... what about doing maths with CATS? Can you do one cat times zero? What's the result? Here in Birmingham we spend the evenings trying to find an answer... Any help?
Although I couldn't stop thinking about this today I also discovered a lot of interesting things happening around the world. The day has started with "how to predict earthquakes". They are not so easy to predict as all of you could probably guess but a combination of researches in history of the earthquakes, in structure engineering together with measurements of different factors can definitely help in saving lives. After these good news we met George!! George is an autopilot introduced in an award lecture of Dr.Young about the benefits of automating tasks in our lives but also the potential risks. The lecture was really interesting, even more for me because George is the name of my coffee machine :)
Let me know if you have any solutions...
Good night!
Alice

British Science Festival: DAY 2

2010-09-15T22:05:00.004+01:00

Hello people!!
Here in Birmingham the Festival is very very intense, no time for lunch or dinner today (luckily there is a chip shop :P )...
So today I started with virtual design of cars and simulations of crash tests. I give you just two numbers that have impressed me: for a new vehicle the engineers need to design 4000 new parts and the electrical components require more or less about 10 millions of line of code. AHHH!!!
I attended, then, a Charles Darwin Award Lecture by Dr. Grahn about the sense of rhythm in babies and how rhythms and musics can aid movements in patients with Parkinson's disease.
What we can follow here is incredibly exciting and various. In the afternoon I watched a Real play by a Real theatre company to describe the importance of having a unified database of medical records across the country and related issues about online data and privacy.
Walking around and attracted by a familiar accent I then discovered an "Aberdonian" research group. They use a Virtual Landscape Theatre to modify a landscape and discuss about that. We had an argument about improving accessibility versus enlarging the villages in an Aberdeenshire zone. We all agreed that we should change the weather first. :P:P
Ok, I think you are all bored enough but I just want to tell you that we finished this long day with the last results on the science of dating people. I got a lot of tips ...but I'm not going to share them with you.....
Goodnight everyone..and I apologise for all the mistakes I made but I'm really really exhausted...
See you tomorrow!!!

British Science Festival: DAY 1

2010-09-14T23:14:00.004+01:00

Hello everyone!!
I'm in Birmingham attending the British Science Festival 2010!!

For who doesn't know what this festival is I suggest you to have a look at
British Science Festival. It is one of Europe's largest science festivals, this year the theme is "better lives through science" and it focuses the attention on many of the region's key research strengths including medical technology, health-care, energy, and digital communications. (I haven't really seen anything about digital communications yet....but anyways...). But I think it's also a great opportunity to meet something new, different from the field where we usually work, presented by great speakers in a funny environment.
Unfortunately I forgot at home the cable to connect the camera so I will upload some pictures only when I'll be back in Aberdeen but I'm gonna give you a short introduction about the events that I have followed during the day!!
I started with the talk "The new psychology of Leadership" and the only hint I'm going to give you is that a successful leadership happens when the leader represents a social identity of the group of followers and the followers believe in this sense of "we-ness". It was a really interesting talk leaded by prof. Alex Haslam.
The UKRC has presented an event where three great women have presented their successful carrier in science. I liked the talk of Dr.Sarah Baillie for her interdisciplinary carrier. Thanks to her veterinary background and a Phd in computer science, she invented the Haptic cow, a virtual simulator for training veterinary students in making diagnosis.
I don't want you to get bored but finally I have seen this incredible Zero Carbon House ...you have to take a look to these pictures to see what it is like .... have a look here...

And for today it's all.
Good night from Birmingham!!!
Alice

Conference

2010-09-11T16:17:00.002+01:00

Hi everyone, I'm posting from Desenzano del Garda, Brescia, in Italy. Although it may sound as a holiday, I came here for a conference: the 3rd International Conference in Computational Models of Argument (COMMA). As the interested reader might have guessed, this is the one conference entirely devoted to my subject, gathering more than 60 scientists from Argentina (2) and other countries (n-2). The event took place from Wednesday to Friday, with a pretty busy agenda: sessions from 9 to 5, plus a demo session and a discussion panel. Lunches, a cocktail and a gala dinner were included.
I had the pleasure of taking half a session for myself, painfully presenting two papers, long and short, respectively. The slides had nice drawings and animations. I could bore you with a summary of each paper but I prefer not to, and I believe you agree. In any case I'll be more than happy to do it in person, in the kitchen - you just have to accept at least two "mates".
See you guys on Tuesday, ciao!
Nico

Profile: Alice Toniolo

2010-09-09T18:36:00.002+01:00

Name: Alice Toniolo

Start date: Spring 2010

Project/area: Looking at how Software Agents can support human decision makers for planning joint activities.

Favourite biscuit? Biscotti Galletti!!! Sorry I'm Italian I can't hide my origins!!

Favourite place? "The world"- I'm fascinated by every place, big cities, small villages, mountains and seas, deserts and glaciers, every shred of this earth has something beautiful... unfortunately I won't have time to see every corner of this planet but I'm trying!!

Favourite word? "Smile"

Twitter? Facebook? Other? Find me on Facebook!

iPhone? Blackberry? Other? ...sorry only a very old Nokia!!

What can you not live without? Chocolate and music.

Which character from film, television or literature most resembles you? No idea.

If you weren't working at dot.rural, what would you be doing? I would run my own bar or restaurant or both.

Use ten words to describe a dot.rural colleague (without naming names): hard-working, funny, friendly, curious, sociable, patient, happy, encouraging....

Is there anything we don't already know about you? I don't know, if you have any question just ask me!!

Profile: Mukta Aphale

2010-09-02T21:14:00.003+01:00

Name: Mukta S. Aphale

Start date: 14th Dec. 2009

Project/area: Security and Privacy Policy Management. I am planning to look at how intelligent agents can assist in policy authoring and refinement.

Favourite biscuit? Bourbon; Parle-G also called as Glucose biscuits (India); Anzac biscuits (Australia)

Favourite place? There are many places near and dear to my heart.

Pune - My hometown in India where I spent 25 years of my life;

Konkan - Coastal area of Maharashtra state, India - full of small and peaceful villages with minimal contact with the modern world;

Newcastle, Australia - Where I started a new life with my husband Sumeet;

Aberdeen, UK - Yes, Aberdeen is my favourite place. Here I could see my life shaping up in a different direction

Favourite word? Food

Twitter? Facebook? Other? Twitter (mukta_aphale), Also facebook, orkut, linkedin, shelfari

iPhone? Blackberry? Other? I was loyal to Nokia sometime ago but now I am with Xperia X10 mini.

What can you not live without? Singing

Which character from film, television or literature most resembles you? I don't know. I think all the characters in films/television/literature are larger than life and I have quite an ordinary personality.

If you weren't working at dot.rural, what would you be doing? Working for some software firm.

Use ten words to describe a dot.rural colleagues (without naming names): Motivated, Friendly, Sociable, Helpful, Courteous, Intelligent, Enthusiastic, Sincere, Modest, Generous.

Is there anything we don't already know about you? I was able to converse in Japanese for business purpose 4 years ago. It is a big joke in my house, as I can only remember basic vocabulary and greetings now. I really wish to brush up my skills and learn more.

Highland Schools Tour 2010 Winds Down

2010-08-28T22:10:00.009+01:00

Day 6 - Portree to Aberdeen
Distance travelled = 232.1 miles = 373.5 km

In total, lectures delivered to ~733 pupils.

After one week on the road, eight lectures in five schools spanning the Highlands, one problem-solving day, a few (intentional!) explosions, being eaten alive by midges, discovering the square sausage, over 15 hours of unloading/loading the van, pushing our new equipment (and the royal mail's delivery times!) to the limit and back, and some warm receptions, the Highland Schools Tour has finished... Until 2011!

We hope the lectures have proved informative and inspirational as well as introducing the annual TechFest in September science festival. The feedback we've received so far is positive and great to hear.

Thanks to all the teachers and pupils at the five High Schools, and to Julius, Kelly, Derek, Gorry, Aileen, Kitty, Alex (Two Lochs FM) and many others for their parts in making this year's Tour a success! :-)

On the journey back to Aberdeen...

... we stopped for lunch in Grantown on Spey; a normally sleepy town. Today it was hosting the annual 'Thunder in the Glens' welcoming over 1500 Harley Davidson motorcycles into town.

OK, so that's enough from us.

One quick reminder though - if you're from Kinlochbervie, Ullapool, Gairloch, Plockton or Portree High Schools don't forget to submit your entries for the Highland Schools 2010 Challenge ASAP.

Good luck and goodbye!

Highland Schools Tour - Radio Interview on 'Two Lochs FM'

2010-08-27T23:02:00.031+01:00

Heard from Alex Gray (Chief Engineer, Chairman and presenter of 'Two Lochs' local radio in Gairloch).

Here are a couple of piccies from our time recording inside the station... Along with a clip of our interview that went out on the air waves. Enjoy! :-)

Highland Schools Tour Finale in Portree!

2010-08-27T22:41:00.005+01:00

Day 5 - Portree

Really impressive school (only 2 years old) and great venue - super-high tech - and warm reception from Mr Breen and the Deputy Head.

Largest audiences yet at Portree High School; our lectures were delivered to approx half the school (~300 pupils) from S1 through to S4.

Equipment held out well, with our brand new pedal-o-meter and teacher trap surviving the whole Tour!

Heavy rain delayed packing up and loading the van for the final time. Now back on the road and spending our final evening in Broadford.

Highland Schools Tour Heads to the Islands

2010-08-27T22:26:00.004+01:00

Day 4 - Plockton to Portree
Distance travelled = 38.0 miles = 61.2 km

In a break from the usual format, after our lecture...

... we ended up being guest judges at Plockton High School's ''Annual Energy Problem-Solving Day'', featuring local press coverage.

The students were tasked with building working, model wind turbines in groups and subjecting their models to the earthquake and wind tunnel tests...

...Thanks to Mr Kean and congratulations to group #8! :-)

Got a really positive response from the school and Headmaster at Plockton (who sat in on our lecture) - a great boost!

Set off for Portree...

Now arrived ahead of the final day of lectures tomorrow, as the Tour draws to a close... for this year.

I'm in the attic of the Pink Guest House at Portree, just on the harbour. Meanwhile, Ken's camping out in the local driving instructor's spare room. Random!

Had a few probs with internet access at the Portree guesthouse when trying to submit this blog entry on the actual night (26th August). Hence the 1-day delay...

Profile: Julius Bwesigye

2010-08-27T11:55:00.005+01:00

Name: Julius Bwesigye

Start Date: 1st December 2009

Project/area: Technology for the people, by the people

Favourite biscuit? The round ones?

Favourite place? Kabale

Favourite word? Hope

Twitter? Facebook? Other? Linkedin and Linkedout (Facebook)

iPhone? Blackberry? Other? Blackberry

What can you not live without? Music

Which character from film, television or literature most resembles you? Dave Chappelle. (And like him, I used to be funny)

If you weren't working at dot.rural, what would you be doing? Trying to manufacture expanded metal mesh

Use ten words to describe ten different dot.rural colleagues: driven, adventurous, brilliant, fun, thoughtful, jovial, kind, multi-talented, innovative, refreshing

Is there anything we don't already know about you? Founded fairviews.org, akatale.com and I have 3 goats

Gairloch High and 5 Minutes of Fame on 'Two Lochs' Local Radio!

2010-08-25T21:34:00.005+01:00

Day 3 - Gairloch to Plockton
Distance travelled = 62.2 miles = 100.1 km

Our replacement 'key' components arrived at Gairloch High School ahead of our arrival. Managed to fit them before the day's lectures - we're back in business! Thanks again to Derek Logan (Fraser Noble electronics workshop) and Gorry Fairhurst (dot.rural Engineering Co-Investigator) for their emergency assistance.

Fantastic classes at Gairloch today. Total audience ~180 of super enthusiastic pupils delivering very positive feedback to us via their Physics teacher Mrs McRae :-)

In between lectures we were invited to the local radio station a few hundred metres along the Loch from the school (Two Lochs Radio - Britain's smallest commercial radio station, 106 and 106.6 FM).

Alex Gray the station manager, chief radio engineer, one of many volunteers, and the presenter interviewed us for a 'guest slot' (to be aired tomorrow morning). For more info, check out: http://www.2lr.co.uk/

Arrived in picturesque Plockton tonight ahead of tomorrow's packed schedule of our lectures and Plockton High School's 'Annual Energy Problem-Solving Day'.

Profile: Lisa Thomson

2010-08-25T15:17:00.007+01:00

Name: Lisa Thomson

Start Date: 23rd Oct 2009

Project/area: Management (boo!)

Favourite biscuit? has to be milk chocolate digestives

Favourite place? Hazlehead Park, Aberdeen on a sunny day

Favourite word? Toots - that's what I call my kids

Twitter? Facebook? Other? I'm on facebook and linkedin but not really up with the social/business networking yet

iPhone? Blackberry? Other? Was HTC until recently - now an iPhone4 - and no I don't have any reception issues

What can you not live without? apart from chocolate, I would have to say music - keeps me sane

Which character from film, television or literature most resembles you? Not got a clue! I have been compared to Little Miss Neat (from the Mister Men and Little Miss books) - does that count?

If you weren't working at dot.rural, what would you be doing? Running my own business or driving fast cars - or both!

Use ten words to describe a dot.rural colleague (without naming names): friendly, chatty, considerate, funny, honest, helpful, happy, hard-working, sociable, gregarious

Is there anything we don't already know about you? When I was 8 yrs old I had to stop eating chocolate as I had stomach migraines from the cocoa. I became sick fed up of fruit pastilles and opal fruits but thankfully grew out of the migraines. I am still making up for those lost years - see favourite biscuit and cannot live without comments!

Profile: Jennie Dick

2010-08-25T15:11:00.009+01:00

Name: Jennie Dick

Start date: 1st October 2009

Project/area: Research Administrator

Favourite biscuit? Oreo dipped in ice cold milk or a plain choc digestive

Favourite place? Morar

Favourite word? Flabergasted

Twitter? Facebook? Other? Facebook

iPhone? Fits an iPhone?

What can you not live without? My daughter she keeps me on the straight and narrow (whether I want to be there or not!!)

Which character from film or television most resembles you? Judge Judy :)

If you weren't working at dot.rural, what would you be doing? Horseriding

Use ten words to describe Ten dot.rural colleagues (without naming names): Pernickity, tenacious, fair, enthusiastic, willful, ambitious, talkative, hardworking, late, lovely

Is there anything we don't already know about you? I am a Qualified Reflexologist

The first thing I'd rescue in a fire is (if alone in the house) Photographs

Profile: Aileen Johnston

2010-08-25T15:07:00.009+01:00

Name: Aileen Johnston
Start Date: 1st October 2009
Position: Secretary (Office Mum)
Favourite Biscuit: Bourbons or Custard Creams I could seriously eat whole packs at a time which is why I never buy them!
Favourite Place: It's between North Uist in the Outer Hebridies and anywhere in London. I know they are completely different from each other but that's why I love them so much.
Favourite Word: Knackered because 90% of the time I am.
Twitter? Facebook? Other? Because of my last job I am on everything going but I really only use Facebook and am mildly obsessed with it.
iPhone? Blackberry? Other? iPhone but I wish I had never given up my Blackberry.
What can you not live without?: Really really good food! I love all kinds of food and spend most of my weekends trying out new restaurants or persuading my husband to cook something that I have seen on one of the many cookery programmes I watch!
Which character from film, tv or literature most resembles you? I have absolutely no idea! Please feel free to leave in the comments section if you have any ideas.
If you weren't working at dot.rural what would you be doing? If money was no object I would be travelling round the world with my husband visiting all our friends and family who are scattered all over the place. If that was not an option, I would like to go back to Uni to become a midwife.
Use ten words to describe a dot.rural colleague(without naming names): Intelligent, Kind, Funny, Quiet, Friendly, Motivated, Patient, Ambitious, Unassuming, Well Mannered.
Is there anything we don't already know about you?: Probably not as I like to tell everybody everything about me whether they want to know or not! If anyone has any burning desire to know more then feel free to just ask!

Profile: Ruth Wilson

2010-08-25T14:20:00.004+01:00

Name: Ruth Wilson

Start date: 1 July 2010

Project/area: Enterprise & culture: doing a PhD in social networking in rural communities.

Favourite biscuit? United biscuits are no longer available so I'll go for M&S all butter chocolate chip cookies which are good dipped in tea, but Oreos and Choco Leibniz (milk) are also high up on the list.

Favourite place? Easdale.

Favourite word? Pudding.

Twitter? Facebook? Other? Twitter and Facebook.

iPhone? Blackberry? Other? iPhone and an old Nokia.

What can you not live without? My Macbook.

Which character from film or television most resembles you? Elaine from Seinfeld or Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica.

If you weren't working at dot.rural, what would you be doing? Proofreading and web design, both of which I do on the side.

Use ten words to describe a dot.rural colleague (without naming names): eloquent, erudite, sprightly, dazzling, random, absurd, distracting, menacing, ludicrous, curious

Is there anything we don't already know about you? The first thing I'd rescue in a fire is Mousey, a toy I've had since the day I was born.

Highland Schools Tour: Warm Reception in Ullapool

2010-08-24T22:10:00.005+01:00

Day 2 - Ullapool to Gairloch
Distance travelled = 55.5 miles = 89.3 km

Earlier today we were welcomed into Ullapool with a very enthusiastic crowd of S1-S2 students. A knowledgeable bunch, all itching to get involved with the demos (or 'volunteering' Mr H for the finale!).

On the way from Ullapool to Gairloch, saw some enormous trees...

...turns out they're Canadian Redwoods. Amazing.

Attempted to cross the deepest Gorge in the UK but (fortunately!) the suspension bridge was closed for 'maintenance'. Oh well...

Checked in to the Myrtle Bank Hotel with rooms overlooking Loch Gairloch. Stunning.

Swung by Gairloch High School in preparation for tomorrow's early start - another spectacular school roof.

Two lectures to deliver tomorrow, both with big audiences (>100).

Caught up with Ken's former colleagues from his research days at Glasgow University, talking shop.

Another successful dinner outing as Trout forces Salmon to Na Mara fish restaurant. Delicious! :-)

Energy Show Crackles into Kinlochbervie!

2010-08-23T21:21:00.007+01:00

Day 1 - Kinlochbervie to Ullapool
Distance travelled = 60 miles = 96.6 km

After a great start in Kinlochbervie (two shows and we saw half the school S1 to S6)...

...we have headed down to Ullapool.

The lectures in Kinlochbervie were good, enthusiastic pupils, some quite opinionated with regards to issues around energy quotas and the like. One pupil so enthusiastic he managed to blow our brand new pedalometer. Thanks to Gorry, and Derek in Fraser Noble Workshop, we should see a spare part with us by Wednesday in Gairloch.

Tomorrow we improvise!! Everything's a challenge we guess. Ullapool seems to be looking forward to our visit. We kick off early tomorrow with an audience of 90 pupils from S1 upwards.

Tonight we again visited a fish restaurant (following yesterday's lunch AND dinner). Claire is mad on fish. Tomorrow I veto! (Claire says 'nooooooooo').

Thought for the day: What is the carbon footprint of striking a match?...

Ken and Claire (aka Salmon and Trout)

Profile: Gina Maffey

2010-08-23T14:07:00.001+01:00

Name: Gina Maffey

Start date: 1st March 2010

Project/area: Looking into the potential for the use of technology as a tool for communication within deer management, part of the Natural Resource Conservation Theme.

Favourite biscuit? Without a doubt the hobnob, plain or with chocolate I'm not fussed!

Favourite place? The farm where I was brought up, especially at the beginning of Autumn

Favourite word? 'No worries' technically two words but it's probably the most used phrased in my vocabulary.

Twitter? Facebook? Other? Twitter... @ginazoo and facebook.

iPhone? Blackberry? Other? Other... Sony ericsson W980, I could do with upgrading.

What can you not live without? Music. If I could I'd have a personal soundtrack to my life.

Which character from film, television or literature most resembles you? I've been compared to Charlotte Church and Billie Piper... neither of which I can see... However, as a kid I think it was more me trying to immitate characters. In my time I have tried to be like George from 'The Famous Five,' Mary Lennox from 'The Secret Garden' and Lucy from 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe', along with many others.

If you weren't working at dot.rural, what would you be doing? Pursuing a job that involved being outside, abroad and most likely in the jungle.

Use ten words to describe a dot.rural colleague (without naming names): Motivated, Excitable, Organised, Intelligent, Passionate, Affable, Sociable, Modest, Diligent, Courteous.

Is there anything we don't already know about you? I continually make plans for things I would like to achieve, however from a young age four of these have never changed; To see moutain gorillas in Rwanda, to go to South Africa, to play the saxaphone and to meet David Attenborough. I have currently succeded in doing two of these!

Profile: Alasdair Mort

2010-08-23T11:12:00.003+01:00

Name: Alasdair Mort

Start date: 11th Jan 2010

Project/area: Healthcare theme - currently working on MIME (Managing Information in Medical Emergencies)

Favourite biscuit? After much consideration and taste testing...the humble Bourbon

Favourite place? The Isle of Barra, Western Isles. My wife's family have a small cottage at the very northern tip of the island.

Favourite word? Soporific (so-por-if-ik: tending to induce drowsiness or sleep)

Twitter? Facebook? Other? I'm on Facebook.

iPhone? Blackberry? Other? Nokia 5800 smartphone.

What can you not live without? Coffee! Tried without it once and broke out in a cold sweat.

Which character from film, television or literature most resembles you? I have no idea! Someone once said I looked like Ewan MacGregor but I think they should have gone to Specsavers.

If you weren't working at dot.rural, what would you be doing? Full-time dad, badminton coach or working for a voluntary organisation.

Use ten words to describe a dot.rural colleague (without naming names): Exuberant, energetic, dynamic, happy, considered, braw, skilled, daredevil, wise, whirlwind.

Is there anything we don't already know about you? I'm a qualified badminton coach registered with Badminton Scotland.

Highland Schools Tour Kicks Off!

2010-08-22T21:08:00.006+01:00

Day 0 - Aberdeen to Kinlochbervie
Distance travelled= 196.8 miles = 316.7 km

We arrived in Kinlochbervie late this afternoon after a long trip up from Aberdeen and some precarious roads!

First stop - we checked out the High School. It looks great with a distinctive roof! :-)

We're staying at the Kinlochbervie Hotel where we're sitting right now, writing this and making some last minute tweaks (eek!) to our lecture.

On the trip up we noted a few examples of renewable energy in action and sensing technologies. This will link in nicely with our lecture tomorrow - giving it a local slant.

Something else we noticed whilst travelling on the local roads and using the vast amounts of passing places was how incredibly friendly all the locals are! Everyone seems very smiley... A good sign for tomorrow!

On arrival today we visited the nearby Smoo Cave. Highly recommend this - v. dramatic!

After dinner tonight we're all 'fished out'.

2010-08-12T12:01:00.002+01:00

Interdisciplinary science...

The university system operates under division and subdivsion. Colleges that host schools, schools that host courses, courses that host modules and modules that aim to inform and educate a hugely diverse range of students.

There are arguments that maybe this structure is too specialist, blinkering individuals to themes and topics that only lie within their field. As universities appear to recognise that interdisciplinary projects have a growing appeal, is it right to refine teaching within recognised disciplines? Changing this would require a complete overhaul in the university system, something that no university is ready for.

However investment in departments such as dot.rural have to be a step in the right direction. In harnessing the 'expertise' of an individual from one discipline and challenging them to address problems in another discipline innovative ideas can regularly be brought to the table. There is no guarantee that these ideas will work but the presentation of continually fresh angles and insights ensures an intriguing and interesting working environment.

Only time can tell if dot.rural will be succesful in paving the way for future interdisciplinary projects...